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LIBRARY 

,  OF    THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


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PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 


A   TREATISE 


OF   THE 


FACTS,  PRINCIPLES,  AND    IDEALS 
OF  ETHICS 


BY 

GEORGE   TRUMBULL  LADD 

PROFESSOR   OF   PHILOSOPHY   IN   YALE    UNIVERSITY 


NEW   YORK 
CHARLES   SCRIBNER'S   SONS 
1902   . 


L3 


Copyright,  1902, 
By  Charles  Sckibner's  Sons 


Published,  February,  1902 


x^iftKV- 


John  Wilsox  and  Son,  Cambuidge,  U.S.A. 


Hn  (grateful  i^emorg 

OP 

A   GOOD   MAN  — MY   FATHER 


101930 


"  He  who  does  not  unconditionally  believe  in  the  Might  of  Goodness 
in  the  world  and  in  its  final  victory,  he  can  no  longer  lead  in  human 
affairs  —  I  do  not  say  rightly,  but  even  with  any  lasting  success." 

RoTHE. 


PREFACE 


The  number  of  voluminous  works  dealing  with  man's  moral 
life  and  moral  development  which  have  recently  appeared  has 
been  by  no  means  inconsiderable.  Among  these  some  have 
been  especially  noteworthy,  both  for  the  array  of  phenomena 
which  they  have  marshalled,  and  also  for  the  scientific  spirit 
and  method  which  have  characterized  their  treatment  of  these 
phenomena.  It  is  difficult  to  say  how  much  this  fact  discloses 
as  to  the  revival  of  a  more  profound  and  vital  interest  in  the 
study  of  morality  —  properly  so-called.  Doubtless  the  history 
of  the  evolution  of  the  race  on  the  side  of  manners  and  morals 
arouses  in  many  minds  only  the  same  kind  of  curiosity  as  that 
to  which  the  sciences  of  biology  and  anthropology  are  so  vigor- 
ously ministering,  all  over  the  scientific  world,  at  the  present 
time.  But  such  interest  is  by  no  means  necessarily  the  equiv- 
alent of  that  which  is  demanded  by  the  kind  of  inquiry  upon 
which  I  have  entered  in  this  volume.  For  this  inquiry  pro- 
poses at  least  to  raise,  even  if  it  cannot  completely  answer, 
the  more  ultimate  problems  of  conduct  as  our  experience 
forces  them  upon  the  reflective  thinking  of  mankind.  I  have, 
therefore,  called  this  treatise  of  human  moral  life  and  moral 
development  a  "  Philosophy  of  Conduct." 

The  title  must  not,  however,  be  understood  as  though  my 
proposal  were  to  write  a  book  on  Ethics  with  only  scanty  re- 
gard for  the  actual  facts  of  conduct,  or  for  the  current  opin- 
ions of  mankind  respecting  the  significance  and  the  value  of 
these  facts.  As  the  introductory  chapters  expressly  explain, 
and  as  the  procedure  and  conclusions  of  the  entire  treatise 
make  clear,  I  consider  the  "  high-and-dry  "  a  priori  method 


Vlll  PREFACE 

wholly  unsuitable  to  ethics.  Indeed,  I  may  confidently  ap- 
peal to  all  my  previous  work  to  show  that  such  a  method 
is  unsuitable  for  adequate  treatment  of  any  of  the  various 
branches  of  philosophy,  even  the  most  purely  metaphysical. 
For  philosophy  itself  is  the  investigation  and  interpretation  of 
the  sum  total  of  human  experience  ■>—  with  all  its  implicates  — 
by  the  method  of  critical,  harmonizing,  and  synthetic  reflec- 
tive thinking.  Ethics  especially,  however  metaphysical  it  may 
become,  must  always  remain  practical.  For  ethics  has  its 
roots  in  facts  of  experience ;  and  its  fruitage  must  be  an  im- 
provement of  experience.  The  experience  with  which  it  deals 
is  of  conduct ;  that  is  to  say,  the  whole  circle  of  morality  lies 
within  the  practical  life.  And  yet,  the  experience  of  man's 
moral  being  and  moral  evolution  is  also  of  such  a  nature  as 
to  demand  a  philosophical  treatment  throughout;  for  until 
fact  is  transcended  the  ethical  is  not  reached.  As  I  have 
clearly  shown  in  this  book,  a  merely  empirical  ethics,  which 
is  without  metaphysics,  leaves  the  mind  in  a  region  where  all 
that  has  regard  to  the  highest  principles  and  more  ultimate 
sanctions  of  conduct  is  darkened,  if  not  wholly  obscured,  by 
doubt,  confusion,  and  bewilderment. 

I  have  therefore  aimed  to  give  this  treatise  some  special 
claim  upon  those  who  wish  for  a  more  fundamental  discussion 
of  ethical  problems  than  has  been  customary  of  late ;  and  yet 
to  conduct  the  discussion  in  the  modern  method  and  with  due 
regard  for  all  the  interests  involved.  This  aim  has  been 
realized  in  the  following  particular  ways.  In  Part  First,  the 
nature  of  the  Moral  Self,  or  of  man  as  equipped  for  the  life 
of  conduct,  has  been  described  as  this  nature  appears  in  the 
light  of  psychological  science,  both  individual  and  ethnic. 
Here  the  attempt  has  been  made  to  adjust  according  to  the 
actual  known  facts  the  conflicting  claims  of  those  who  regard 
man's  moral  life  throughout  as  a  sort  of  divine,  and  once  for 
all  ready-made  endowment  and  of  those  who,  on  the  other 
hand,  assume  to  explain  morality  as  the  result  of  a  psycho- 


PREFACE  ix 

physical,  or  an  economic,  or  even  a  purely  physiological  evo- 
lution. This  attempt  has  resulted  in  an  analysis  of  man's 
ethical  consciousness  which  is,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  at  the 
same  time  more  thorough  and  more  modern  than  that  at- 
tempted in  any  other  similar  treatise. 

In  Part  Second^  which  treats  of  the  Virtuous  Life,  it  has 
been  my  aim  to  show  how,  in  spite  of  the  bewildering  variety 
of  opinions  and  practices  which  has  always  existed,  there  is 
still,  and,  so  far  as  can  be  discovered,  always  has  been,  a  very 
substantial  agreement  touching  the  characteristic  traits  and 
liabitual  practices  of  the  "  good  man."  This  agreement  does 
not,  however,  favor  any  of  the  more  current  theories  of  the 
moralists  regarding  the  true  nature  and  unity  of  the  virtues ; 
or  regarding  the  nature  and  obligations  of  the  so-called 
"  Moral  Law."  But  the  argument,  as  based  upon  these  facts 
of  agreement,  does  lead  to  another  conception,  at  once  more 
subtly  and  delicately  ideal  and  yet  more  truly  and  unchange- 
ably real,  of  both  the  nature  of  virtuous  living,  and  of  the 
laws  and  principles  whose  dominion  and  rational  rights  such 
living  acknowledges,  and  to  which  it  yields  obedience  and 
offers  allegiance. 

And,  finally,  in  Part  Third  I  have  discussed  the  Nature  of 
the  Right.  It  is,  of  course,  this  Part  in  which  the  method  of 
philosophy  is  most  prominently  and  unmistakably  employed. 
For  metaphysics  is  invoked  to  undertake  the  speculative  solu- 
tion of  those  ultimate  problems  of  ethics  which  an  investiga- 
tion of  the  phenomena  of  man's  moral  life  and  moral  evolu* 
tion  from  the  empirical  points  of  view  leaves  wholly  unsolved. 
Yet  the  more  distinctively  philosophical  third  of  this  treatise 
should  not  be  considered  as  in  any  respect  independent  of, 
not  to  say  separated  from,  the  treatment  of  man's  moral  self- 
hood and  of  the  conditions  and  principles  of  his  virtuous  living. 
Only,  whereas  philosophy  has  subordinated  itself  to  psychology 
and  anthropology  in  the  collection  and  interpretation,  by 
primary  intention  as  it  were,  of  the  phenomena,  it  finally 


X  PREFACE 

answers  the  imperative  demand  of  these  sciences  to  construct 
a  theory  which  shall  offer  a  more  ultimate  explanation  of  the 
same  phenomena. 

I  make  no  apology  for  the  frequent  references  to  other  works 
of  mine  which  are  found  in  this  book.  Properly  and  of  neces- 
sity, the  psychological  views  and  theories  which  have  been 
elsewhere  discussed  are  here  made  use  of  in  treating  of  the 
Moral  Self  and  of  the  Virtuous  Life.  More  especially  im- 
portant has  it  been  that  certain  truths  regarding  the  nature 
of  knowledge,  of  reality,  and  of  the  mind's  life,  should  be  as- 
sumed and  carried  up  into  the  realm  of  ethical  discussion, 
wherever  this  discussion  shows  the  imperative  need  of  receiv- 
ing illumination  from  these  truths.  For,  in  fact,  psychology, 
epistemology,  and  metaphysics  are  all  in  some  sort  subordi- 
nate and  contributory  to  ethics.  The  most  important  minis- 
trations to  human  welfare  which  they  can  perform  are  directed 
toward  the  elucidation  and  improvement  —  the  rational  and 
practical  betterment  —  of  the  life  of  conduct.  As  for  myself, 
in  all  my  investigations  hitherto,  I  have  had  this  end  in  view. 
And  it  was,  in  no  small  degree,  the  conviction  that  human 
morality  cannot  be  made  safely  and  permanently  to  repose 
upon  a  false  psychological  basis,  or  upon  an  agnostic  view  of 
knowledge,  or  upon  an  inadequate  metaphysics,  which  stimu- 
lated and  guided  me  throughout  all  these  earlier  works.  For 
man  is  a  unity  —  although  having  indeed  a  wonderful  complex- 
ity of  activities  with  their  various  ends  and  interests.  And 
he  cannot  safely  build  the  structure  of  a  virtuous  life  upon 
false  opinions  of  his  own  Being  or  of  the  Ultimate  Realities ; 
neither  can  he  easily  find  true  views  on  these  subjects  when 
he  departs  widely  from  the  path  of  virtuous  living.  He  must 
rise,  or  fall,  or  stand  still,  as  that  unique  unity  which  he 
really  is. 

If,  then,  any  reader  of  this  book  should  occasionally  be 
offended  by  an  appearance  of  dogmatism  at  points  where  dis- 
cussion, or  even  concession  to  contending  views  would  seem 


PREFACE  xi 

more  appropriate,  I  must  ask  him  either  to  pardon  the  manner 
of  treatment  or  else  to  resort,  for  this  discussion,  to  those 
other  writings  where  it  may  be  found. 

Such  a  philosophy  of  conduct  as  I  have  attempted  to  estab- 
lish will  probably  meet  with  opposition  chiefly  from  three 
sources  of  influence.  The  first  of  these  is  the  current  theory 
of  biological  evolution.  So  long  as  this  theory  remains  on  its 
own  grounds  the  philosophy  of  human  morality  need  raise  no 
objection  to  its  speculations,  however  well  or  ill  founded  they 
may  be.  There  "  the  struggle  for  existence  "  may  perhaps  be 
best  treated  as  a  bare,  unmodified,  and  brute  fact.  But  when 
biological  science  proposes  to  employ  the  same  method,  and 
to  regard  the  phenomena  from  an  unchanged  point  of  view, 
the  moral  life  and  moral  development  of  man  being  the  sub- 
ject for  investigation,  its  proposal  deserves  the  most  prolonged 
and  searching  criticism.  There  can  be  little  doubt,  I  think, 
that  the  practical  effect  of  the  intrusion  of  biology  into  the 
sphere  of  ethics  is,  for  the  present,  exceedingly  mischievous 
to  the  moral  life  of  the  people,  and  to  the  current  opinions  re- 
garding the  right  and  wrong  of  conduct.  It  is  in  part  under 
its  influence  that  we  are  witnessing  a  return  to  the  brutish 
point  of  view,  to  the  doctrine  of  the  right  of  might,  to  the  con- 
cealed or  expressed  opinion  that  it  is  justifiable  for  the  strong 
to  go  as  far  as  they  can  by  way  of  pushing  the  weak  and  the 
unfortunate  over  the  wall.  This  view  of  ethical  phenomena 
I  have  controverted  throughout  by  showing  that  ethics  does 
not  properly  begin  until  the  biological  point  of  view,  and  the 
conclusions  from  this  point  of  view,  are  transcended. 

The  second  source  of  theoretical  and  practical  antagonism 
to  a  sound  philosophy  of  conduct  is  the  reigning  spirit  of 
commercialism.  This  cannot  be  met  by  ethics  on  scientific 
grounds.  For  it  is  not  itself  scientific.  Its  show  of  theoreti- 
cal justification,  OA'en  when  it  rises  no  higher  than  the  lower 
ranges  customarily  occupied  by  a  so-called  "  ethics  of  eco- 
nomics," is  not  intended  as  a  serious  discussion  of  the  prin- 


XU  PREFACE 

ciples  or  problems  of  conduct.  It  is,  as  a  rule,  simply  an 
impotent  attempt  at  self-justification  for  practices  which  it  is 
proposed  to  continue  whether  those  practices  be  justifiable  on 
genuinely  ethical  grounds  or  not.  All,  therefore,  which  ethics 
can  properly  do' to  remove  this  obstacle  is  to  point  out  the  es- 
sential immorality  of  this  spirit,  and  the  bad  morals  of  the 
conduct  it  either  fosters  or  condones ;  and,  in  connection  with 
this  work  of  criticism,  point  out  also  "  the  more  excellent 
way." 

The  third  reason  why  the  student  of  the  philosophy  of  con- 
duct may  expect  indifference,  if  not  secret  or  more  open  an- 
tagonism, toward  any  serious  effort  to  deepen  rational  reflection 
and  elevate  the  tone  of  the  prevalent  moral  consciousness  is 
found  in  the  relatively  low  and  nerveless  ethical  condition  of 
the  current  Christianity.  I  say  "  relatively  "  —  as  compared 
with  the  output  of  energy  in  other  directions.  Of  course,  the 
fact  that  such  is  the  condition  will  be  made  a  matter  of  dis- 
pute. Of  course,  too,  a  treatise  of  ethical  principles  —  especi- 
ally in  its  Preface  —  does  not  furnish  the  proper  place  for 
establishing,  or  even  for  arguing  this  fact.  A  word  of  ex- 
planation, however,  as  to  the  interpretation  of  the  charge  I 
have  just  made  is  certainly  in  place  here.  Whether  the 
morals  of  the  Christian  nations  of  the  world,  considered  as  a 
matter  of  conduct  in  their  more  domestic  social  and  commer- 
cial relations,  or  in  their  intercourse  with  one  another  —  have 
improved  or  deteriorated  does  not  concern  us  at  the  present 
time.  The  only  too  patent  facts  seem  to  me  to  be  these  :  The 
ethically  didactic  or  prophetic  tone,  when  assumed  by  the 
public  teachers,  is  just  now  especially  unpopular  and  obviously 
ineffective.  The  great  political,  commercial,  and  social  prob- 
lems, the  consideration  of  which  is  most  imperative,  are  not 
customarily  discussed  or  settled  from  the  predominatingly 
moral  point  of  view.  Moral  principles,  whether  presented  in 
the  form  of  abstract  deductions  or  of  concrete  maxims,  com- 
mand a  relatively  small  amount  of  thoughtful  interest  or  at- 


PREFACE  xiii 

tention.  The  tone  of  the  prevalent  moral  sentiment  is  neither 
strenuous  nor  lofty.  The  presence  of  baleful  "  double  moral- 
ity" is  quite  generally  either  openly  proclaimed  or  secretly 
tolerated.  The  high  ideals  of  the  best  ethical  teachings  of 
the  past  —  even,  and  especially,  of  the  New  Testament  —  are 
not  taken  to  heart,  or  made  the  models  of  actual  living.  And 
in  all  this  the  multitude  who  compose  the  existing  Christian 
organizations  —  with  a  considerable  number  of  notable  and 
noble  exceptions  —  take  the  part  of  silent  acquiescence,  if  not 
of  unquestioning  or  bewildered  conformity,  rather  than  of  re- 
monstrance and  opposition.  I  repeat  that  the  ethical  spirit 
is  low  and  nerveless  just  now  in  the  body  of  that  community 
which  bears  the  name  of  the  world's  greatest  teacher  of  a 
spiritual  and  divinely  inspired  morality. 

But  not  science,  nor  trade,  nor  society,  nor  religion  itself, 
can  permanently  alter,  or  for  a  long  period  in  the  world's  his- 
tory neglect,  the  fundamental  principles  and  ultimate  ideals 
of  the  moral  life.  If  amid  the  evolution  of  things,  the  flux  of 
interests  and  opinions,  the  changing  constitution  of  human 
society,  and  the  rise  and  fall  of  empires,  there  is  anything  to 
remain  substantially  inviolable,  it  is  these  principles  and  these 
ideals.  "  There  is  no  human  function,"  said  Aristotle,  "  so 
constant  as  the  activities  in  accordance  with  virtue ;  they 
seem  to  be  more  permanent  than  the  sciences  themselves." 
And  said  that  great  moralist,  Sophocles  :  — 

"  They  ne'er  shall  sink  to  slumber  in  oblivion ; 
A  power  of  God  is  there,  untouched  by  Time." 

As  sharing  in  this  same  confidence  I  therefore  put  forth  this 

essay  in  times  which  I  am  compelled  to  regard  as  by  no  means 

favorable  to  its  most  unprejudiced  and  practically  effective 

reception. 

GEORGE  TRUMBULL  LADD. 

Yale  University,  New  Haven,  1902. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTORY 

CHAPTER  I 

THE    SPHERE   AND    PROBLEM    OF   ETHICS 

Page 

The  Problem  of  Conduct  important  —  Character  of  this  Problem  — 
Nature  of  Ethical  Discussion  —  Distinctions  recognized  by  Ethics 
—  Ethics  as  involving  the  Ideal  —  And  the  Conception  of  "the 
Ought "  —  Definition  of  Ethics  —  Ethics  as  Practical 3 


CHAPTER  II 

METHODS   AND   DIVISIONS   OF   ETHICS  \ 

/:  : 
Different  Ways  of  approaching  the  Problem  of  Conduct  —  The  Three 

Methods  of  Ethics— The  Psychological  Method  —  "Data  of  Ethics'* 

so  called  —  Necessity  of  Interpretation  —  Need  of  Psychology  — 

The  Historical  Method  —  Combination  of  Methods  necessary  —  The 

Speculative  Method  —  Division  of  the  Subject 19 


CHAPTER  III 

THE    CONCEPTION   OF   THE   GOOD 

Ancient  and  modern  Conception  of  Ethics  —  Titles  like  "  good  "  and 
"  bad "  as  applied  to  Conduct  —  Consciousness  and  the  Good  — 
Degrees  of  the  Good,  and  their  Measurement  —  The  Hedonistic 
Conception  —  Value  of  Discipline  —  Instrumental  and  final  Good 
—  Conception  of  "the  Good-in-Itself  " —  Classification  of  Goods  — 
The  common  Element  —  Development  of  the  Conception  of  the 
Morally  Good— The  Ideal  Good 34 


xvi  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PART    FIRST 
THE    MORAL    SELF 

CHAPTER  IV 

ANALYSIS    OF   MORAL    CONSCIOUSNESS 

Page 
Man  as  Ethical  —  The  two  Classes  of  Moral  Feelings  —  Distinctively 
Ethical  Feelings  —  Nature  of  Ethical  Intellection  —  Ethical  Volition 

—  General  Observations 59 

CHAPTER  V 

THE    FEELING    OF    OBLIGATION 

Primary  Nature  of  the  "  Ought-Consciousness "  —  Its  Relation  to 
Thought  and  Volition  —  Conditions  of  its  Origin  —  Influence  of  Imi- 
tation—  And  of  Tribal  Sympathy — Its  Connection  with  Pleasure- 
Pains  —  Feeling  of  Obligation  uniquely  human  —  Development  of 
the  Feeling  —  Effect  of  Repetition  —  Formation  of  Judgments  of 
Obligation  —  Fusion  with  particular  Passions  and  Affections  — 
Primacy  of  Feeling  —  Relation  of,  to  Stages  of  Development  — 
Nature  of  Conscience 69 

CHAPTER  VI 

OTHER  ETHICAL  FEELINGS 

Nature  of  Moral  Approbation  —  Relation  of,  to  the  Virtues  and  Vices 

—  And  to  the  Pleasure-Pains  —  Resemblance  to  ^Esthetical  Feel- 
ing —  Development  of  Moral  Approbation  —  Feelings  of  Ethical 
Merit  and  Demerit  —  Social  Nature  of  these  Feelings  —  Implica- 
tions as  to  the  Moral  Order 93 

CHAPTER  VII 

ETHICAL   JUDGMENT 

The  so-called  Intellectual  Virtues  —  Development  of  Time-conscious- 
ness necessary  —  And  of  Self-consciousness  —  And  of  the  Causal 
Principle  —  Grounds  of  Ethical  Judgment  —  Psychological  Charac- 
teristics of  this  Judgment  —  Predicate  of  all  ethical  Judgments  — 
Category  of  "the  Right"  —  Historical  Sources  of  ethical  Judg- 
ments —  Domestic,   tribal,   and   religious    Customs  —  Intellectual 


TABLE   OF   CONTENTS  xvii 

Page 

Development  and  the  Growth  of  Moral  Judgment  —  Natural  and 
acquired  Power  of  Judging  —  Characteristic  Experience  —  Ideas 
of  Ends  and  Values  —  Stages  in  the  Evolution  of  Ethical  Opinion  .  106 

CHAPTER  VIII 

MORAL    FREEDOM 

Conception  of  "  Moral  Freedom"  —  Interest  of  Ethics  in  the  Problem 

—  Difficulties  in  the  Way  of  Discussion  —  Present  Position  of  De- 
terminism —  Method  of  Procedure  —  Data  of  Experience  —  Free- 
dom the  Function  of  no  one  Faculty  —  Danger  of  Hypostasizing 
— The  Fact  of  Self- Activity  —  Its  Physiological  Basis  —  Nature  of 
deliberate  Choice  —  Counter  Arguments  —  Consciousness  of  Im- 
putability  —  Testimony  from  Custom  and  Language  —  Imperfect 
Conceptions  of  Personal  Responsibility  —  Objections  to  Freedom 
classified  —  Empirical  Determinism  —  The  "Old-Fashioned  "  — And 
the  "  New-Fashioned  "  —  Relation  of  Motives  to  Volitions  —  In- 
comparability  of  Impulses  and  Ideals  —  The  Conception  of  Char- 
acter —  And  of  Habit  —  Relation  of  Brain-States  to  Psychoses  — 
The  Materialistic  Outcome  —  The  Argument  from  Statistics  — 
The  Conception  of  Causation  applied  —  The  Self  not  a  Mechanism 

—  The  Residuum  of  Mystery 138 

CHAPTER  IX 

THE    MORAL    SELF 

The  Conception  of  Conscience  —  Inclusive  Nature  of  Moral  Selfhood 

—  The  Moral  Self  and  the  Social  Self— The  Scientific  and  the 
Ethical  —  The  Pursuit  of  Ideals  —  Personality  and  Development 

—  Evolution  of  the  Moral  Ideal 189 


PART  SECOND 

THE    VIRTUOUS    LIFE 
CHAPTER  X 

CLASSIFICATION    OF    THE   VIRTUES 

Twofold  Distinction  of  Conduct  —  Conception  of  Virtue  —  The 
Search  for  Unification  —  Different  Principles  of  Classification 
—  Self-regarding  and  Social  Virtues  —  The  Distinction  criticised  — 
Classification  according  to  Objects  —  The  psychological  Classifica- 
tion adopted  —  Unity  of  the  Moral  Self    211 


xviii  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XI 

VIRTUES    OP   THE   WILL  :     COURAGE,    TEMPERANCE,  ETC. 

Page 
Elements  of  Strength  in  Character  —  Nature  of  the  good  Will  —  The 
cardinal  Virtues  of  Will  —  Natural  Fears  —  Natural  Effects  of 
Fear  —  Courage  as  Self-control  of  Fear  —  Rational  Fears  —  Ap- 
parent Prudential  Virtues  —  Moral  Value  of  Courage  —  The  Vice 
of  Cowardice  —  Temperance  as  a  Virtue  —  The  Control  of  Anger 

—  And  of  Sexual  Appetite  —  And  of  the  Desire  of  Possession  — 
Humility  —  Constancy  as  a  Cardinal  Virtue  —  Subordinate  Phases 

of  the  Virtues  of  Will 231 

CHAPTER  Xn 

VIRTUES    OF   THE   JUDGMENT  :     WISDOM,    JUSTNESS,   ETC. 

Judgment  itself  is  Conduct  —  Cardinal  Virtues  of  Judgment  —  Wisdom 
defined  —  Wisdom  as  Evaluation  of  Ends  —  And  Estimate  of  Means 

—  Genuine  Prudential  Virtues  —  Resignation  as  a  Cardinal  Virtue 

—  The  Virtue  of  Justness  —  Moral  Value  of  this  Virtue  —  Concep- 
tion of  Justness  —  Resulting  Doctrine  of  Rights  —  Relations  of 
Custom  and  Law  to  Justice  —  The  Virtue  of  Trueness  —  General 
Estimate  of  this  Virtue  —  The  Evaluation  of  Truth  —  Vices  of 
Thoughtlessness  —  And  of  Dogmatism  —  And  of  Partisanship  — 
Truth-telling  —  Is  Deceit  or  Lying  Justifiable  ? 269 

CHAPTER  XIII 

VIRTUES    OP   FEELING  :     KINDNESS,    SYMPATHY,    ETC. 

Social  Origin  of  these  Virtues  —  Natural  Impulses  to  Kindness  —  And 
Social  Relations  which  define  its  Objects  —  Nature  of  Friendship 

—  The  Virtue  of  Hospitality  —  The  Virtue  of  Pity  —  Origin  and 
Nature  of  Sympathy  —  The  Feeling  of  the  Species  —  Development 
of  Benevolence  —  Influence  of  Philosophy  —  And  of  Art  —  And  of 
Religion  —  The  opposite  Vices  —  Ingratitude  —  Pleasure-giving 
Quality  of  these  Virtues 310 

CHAPTER  XIV 

THE    UNITY    OP   VIRTUE 

The  Search  for  Unity  —  Analogies  from  Psychology  —  The  two  Forms 
of  Unification  —  Tests  of  External  Behavior  —  And  of  Motive  — 
And  of  Intention  —  Virtue  not  mere  "good  Intention"  —  Nor 
identical  with  Benevolence  —  Nor  with  Love  —  The  highest  Self- 


TABLE  OF   CONTENTS  xix 

Page 

Welfare  involved  —  Justness  and  Trueness  not  reducible  to  Benevo- 
lence —  Unity  of  Personality  implied  —  And  Devotion  to  the 
Moral  Ideal 337 


CHAPTER  XV 

DUTY   AND    MORAL    LAW 

Importance  of  these  Conceptions  —  Implications  of  the  Conception  of 
Duty  —  Duties  to  Self  —  Feeling  of  Obligation  involved  —  Origin 
of  the  Conception  of  Duty  —  Are  Duties  and  Virtues  Co-extensive? 
—  Duty  and  Merit — Duties  and  Rights  —  The  Conception  of 
Moral  Law  —  Origin  of  moral  Laws  —  Their  Character  of  an  "  ex- 
ternal Imponent  "  —  Conception  of  a  personal  Source  —  Moral 
Law  never  Impersonal 365 

CHAPTER  XVI 

UNIVERSALITY    OF    MORAL    PRINCIPLES 

Principles  and  Laws  contrasted  —  Nature  of  Moral  Principles  —  And 
of  their  Universality  —  Development  of  Moral  Principles — De- 
pendence upon  Moral  Institutions  —  And  upon  the  Abolition  of 
Distinctions  —  Simplifying  of  Moral  Principles  —  Rational  Deduc- 
tion of  Moral  Principles  —  Influence  of  Individual  Examples  —  And 
of  Ethical  Philosophy  —  Restricting  Power  of  Custom      ....  389 

CHAPTER   XVII 

casuistry;     moral   tact  and    conflict   of   DUTIES 

Difficulties  of  the  Subject  —  Casuistry  as  Ethical  Discipline —  Sources 
of  Casuistry  —  Nature  of  Moral  Tact  —  Necessary  Elements  of  its 
Cultivation  —  Sphere  of  Casuistry — Conflict  of  Duties  —  Reality 
of  such  Conflict — Different  Classes  of  Conflicts  —The  Principle 
of  Individuality — The  Case  of  Truth-telling  examined     .     .     .     .415 

CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE   GOOD   MAN 

General  Description  of  the  Virtuous  Life  —  Influence  of  the  particular 
Ideal  of  Self  —  Conformity  of  the  Actual  to  the  Ideal  —  Danger 
of  excessive  Idealism  —  Discovery  of  ethical  "Antinomies"  — 
The  sentient  Self  and  the  moral  Self —  The  Self-regarding  and  the 
Altruistic  "  Good  Man  "  —  Development  through  Discipline  .     .     .  436 


XX  TABLE  OF  CONTENTS 

PART  THIRD 

THE    NATURE    OF    THE    RIGHT 
CHAPTER  XIX 

THE    ULTIMATE    PROBLEM 

Page 
The  Statement  —  The  Method  of  Treatment  —  Different  "  Schools  of 
Ethics"  —  The  Need  of  Metaphysics 457 

CHAPTER  XX 

UTILITARIANISM    IN   ETHICS 

The  Ancient  Pledonism  —  The  Modern  Utilitarianism  —  Nature  of 
"  Pleasure-Pains  "  —  Sources  of  Human  Happiness  —  The  Evalua- 
tion of  Happiness  —  The  Standard  of  Measurement  —  Problems  of 
a  Hedonistic  Ethics  —  Egoistic  and  Quantitative  Hedonism  —  The 
Question  of  Sanctions  —  Altruistic  and  Quantitative  Hedonism  — 
Qualitative  Hedonism  —  The  Goal  of  Ethics  —  The  Utilitarian 
Modifications  —  And  their  Failure  —  The  Problem  of  Rational 
Worth 467 

CHAPTER  XXI 

LEGALISM    IN    ETHICS 

Antecedent  Improbability  of  this  Theory  —  Ethics   always  Personal 

—  Inapplicable  Conceptions  of  Law  and  Order  —  Moral  Law  as 
Rational  —Views  of  Kant  criticised  —  Law  and  Reality    .     .     .497 

CHAPTER  XXII 

IDEALISM   IN   ETHICS 

Conduct  and  the  idealizing  Activity  —  The  Ideal  of  Rationalism  — 
And  of  Utilitarianism  —  Problems  of  Idealism  —  Claims  of  "  In- 
tuitionism "  —  And  the  Facts  in  its  Support  —  Contradictory 
Facts  —  The  Right,  subjective  and  objective  —  The  Social  Ideal 

—  Application  of  the  Conception  of  Evolution  —  IndividuaUty  of 


TABLE   OF  CONTENTS  xxi 

Paob 

the  Ideal  —  The  Time  of  Realization  —  Personal  Character  of 
Ethical  Ideals  —  Influence  of  the  two  Conceptions,  Personality 
and  Development 507 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

THE    ETHICAL    SCIENCES 

The  comprehensive  Sphere  of  Conduct  —  The  Unethical  View  — 
Economics  as  an  Ethical  Science  —  Common  Basis  of  Ethics  and 
Economics  —  Politics  as  an  Ethical  Science  —  And  so^alled  Social 
Science 537 

CHAPTER  XXIV 

MORALITY   AND    RELIGION 

Untenable  Character  of  the  "  Positivist  View  "  —  Two  Extremes  of 
Opinion  —  Universality  of  Religion  —  Influence  of  Religion  upon 
the  Conception  of  the  Virtues  —  And  upon  their  Practice  —  The 
common  Psychological  Origin  —  Twofold  Nature  of  Piety  —  Speci- 
fically Religious  Duties  so  called  —  Ethical  Influence  of  Religious 
Faiths  and  Practices  —  Religious  "  Purification  "  —  The  Moral  Sup- 
port from  Religion  —  Religious  Fears  and  Moral  Obligation  — 
Effect  of  Religion  on  Moral  Ideals  —  "Double  Morality"  —  Re- 
ligious View  of  the  Moral  Antinomies  —  Influence  on  Morality  of 
the  religious  Postulates  —  Especially  in  their  Superior  Form     .     .  552 

CHAPTER  XXV 

THE   GROUND    OF   MORALITY    AND    THE   WORLD-GROUND 

Nature  of  the  Problem  —  Its  Ultimate  Character  —  Need  of  Help 
from  Philosophy  —  The  Kantian  View  —  The  Theory  of  Reality 
implied  —  And  of  the  Philosophy  of  Knowledge  —  Comprehensive 
Character  of  the  Metaphysics  of  Ethics  —  Philosophical  Conception 
of  the  World-Ground  —  The  Absolute  as  Moral  Self  —  Naturalism 
in  Ethics  —  Positivism  in  Ethics  —  A  Rational  Anthropomorphism 
—  God  as  the  Source  of  Moral  Standards  —  And  of  Moral  Sanc- 
tions—  Morality  of  Natural  Law  —  And  of  Social  Enactments  — 
The  Appeal  from  Social  Standards  —  Doing  the  Divine  Will  — 
Ground  of  the  Community  of  Interests  —  The  World-Ground  and 
Moral  Ideals  —  Solution  of  Ethical  Antinomies  —  Conflict  between 
the  Real  and  the  Ideal 588 


xxii  TABLE  OF   CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE   ULTIMATE    MORAL    IDEAL 

Page 
The  Ideal  of  Conduct  "  in-itself  "  Good  —  The  Morally  Ideal  Self  — 

Social  Character  of  the  Ultimate  Ideal  —  Possibility  of  its  Realiza- 
tion —  The  Permanence  of  Conflict  —  Idealism  and  Realism  in 
Ethics  —  Reconciliation  by  Development  —  Conclusion     ....  636 

INDEX 659 


PHILOSOPHY  OP   CONDUCT 


PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 


INTRODUCTORY 


"  Hoiaever  men  approach  Me,  even  so  do  1  accept  them;  for  the  path  men 
take  from  every  side  is  Mlne.''^ 

Bhagavad  Gita. 


CHAPTER  I 

THE  SPHERE  AND  PROBLEM  OF  ETHICS 

If  one  consults  the  wisdom  of  the  ages  it  will  be  found 
nearly  unanimous  in  the  opinion  that,  of  all  inquiries  the 
most  important  are  those  which  concern  the  right  and  wrong 
forms  of  human  conduct.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  however, 
multitudes  of  men,  through  considerable  periods  of  their 
lives,  seldom  deliberate,  or  even  consciously  propose  these 
inquiries.  Necessities  of  a  physical  kind  seem  to  compel 
them  to  a  daily  walk  along  well  defined  paths  of  action; 
and  where  these  necessities  are  less  powerful,  the  estab- 
lished social  customs  that  environ  them  leave  comparatively 
little  room  for  the  more  independent  exercise  of  any  indi- 
vidual's judgment.  But  perhaps  more  than  all  else,  the 
habits  they  have  themselves  formed  through  years  of  an 
activity  which,  in  accordance  with  a  well-known  psychologi- 
cal law,  has  now  become  a  passive  submission,  ward  off 
attacks  from  any  stimulus  that  would  make  imperative  or 
attractive  the  question:  How  shall  I  act  at  the  present 
moment  ?  In  a  word,  physical  necessity,  social  convention, 
and  individual  habit  combine  to  answer  for  most  men,  as 
though  they  were  matters  of  course,  all  ordinary  questions  of 
ethical  import.  And  so  the  multitude  not  only  eat,  drink, 
and  sleep,  and  go  the  daily  round  of  tasks  or  pleasures, 
but  they  also  discharge  many  of  the  higher  social  and  politi- 
cal functions  without  much  intelligent  and  serious  debate  as 
to  the  quality  or  the  consequences  of  their  conduct. 


4  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  however,  nearly  or  quite  all  of  this 
same   multitude   do   at    certain   times   somewhat   carefully 
weigh  important  problems  of  more  definite  ethical  import. 
And  the  questions  which  the  wisdom  of  the  ages  considers 
so  important  are  themselves  the  questions  of  the  ages.     It  is 
not  the  wise  alone  that  have  raised  and  answered  these  moral 
problems  with  more  or  less   of   self-conscious  feeling  and 
judgment.     The  common  people  have  opinions,  with  show  of 
reasons  attached,  upon  matters  of  conduct.     Even  fools  are 
not  always  lacking  in  a  sort  of  cunning  dialectic,  or  in  a 
somewhat  systematic  rationalism,  upon  such  matters.     It  is, 
to  be  sure,  chiefly  when  the  problems  of  conduct  are  brought 
to  mind  as  objectified  in  the  concrete  behavior  of  some  fellow 
actor  in  life's  drama  toward    themselves  that  their  ethical 
emotions  are  most  stirred  and  their  ethical  judgments  are 
most  clear-sighted  and   emphatic.     It  is  when  some  other 
bow  than  the  one  held  in  their  own  hands  has  speeded  the 
arrow  that  men  question  and   hotly  resent  the  deed  which 
has  caused   them   the  painful   sting,  the  dangerous  wound. 
Above   all    other   occasions    do    they   experience    a    lively 
arousement  of  moral  consciousness  when  the  misdeed   has 
not  only  hurt   them   as    individuals,  but   has    also   been   a 
notable  breach  of  the  established  customs  of  society.     The 
multitude  are  made  more  reflectively  moral  by  feeling  them- 
selves to  be  in  some  way  injured  or  inconvenienced  through 
the    action    of    individuals   who   disregard    the    customary 
morality.     But  beyond   all  this,   and   deeper  down,  lie  the 
questions  concerning  right  conduct  to  which  the  wise  have 
reference,  and  to  which  most  men  at  some  time  in  their  lives 
give  at  least  a  passing  consideration. 

Now  it  is  plain  that  any  serious  inquiry  after  right  and 
wrong  forms  of  conduct  may  lead  the  mind  of  the  inquirer 
in  either  one,  or  in  all,  of  several  different  directions.  In 
its  most  frequent  form  the  ethical  problem  concerns  the 
proper  or  most  feasible   means  of  securing  a  certain  end. 


THE   SPHERE   AND  PROBLEM  OF   ETHICS  5 

For  although  the  opening  dictum  of  the  Nicomachean  Ethics 
—  namely,  that  "every  art  and  every  research,  and  likewise 
every  act  and  purpose  "  has  some  end  of  a  good  in  view  —  is 
not  strictly  true,  since  many  ends  of  every  man's  life  are 
pretty  clearly  defined  by  circumstances  over  which  he  has 
little  immediate  control,  the  thing  which  most  concerns  his 
success  in  the  attainment  of  ends  is  the  selection  of  means. 
The  artizan,  the  merchant,  the  professional  man,  even  the 
most  stupid  laborer,  knows  fairly  well  what  he  is  aiming  at, 
and  does  not  ordinarily  question  the  rightness  or  wrongful- 
ness of  his  aims.  For  the  most  part  also  the  means  avail- 
able for  pursuing  these  ends  are  provided,  as  defined  by  law, 
or  custom  or  convention.  But  ordinarily  the  means  are 
much  more  variable  than  are  the  ends ;  and  the  circumstances 
requiring  an  adaptation  of  means  to  any  particular  end  are 
always  subject  to  change.  It  is  evident,  however,  that  when 
men  deliberate  questions  of  conduct  concerning  the  use  of 
means,  their  problem  is  still  somewhat  complicated.  By 
this  I  do  not  mean  simply  that  it  is  often  difficult  for  them 
to  know  which  of  several  deeds  or  courses  of  conduct  fur- 
nishes the  most  likely  means  to  attain  the  desired  end. 
The  rather  are  we  interested  here  again  to  discover  indica- 
tions of  those  further  and  deeper  problems  which  concern 
the  right  and  wrong  in  human  conduct. 

For  let  it  be  supposed  that,  of  two  or  more  ways  of  attain- 
ing one's  end,  there  is  one  way  against  which  the  laws  or 
the  customs  of  society  have  definitively  pronounced.  Then 
the  ethical  problem  is  tolerably  sure  to  take  upon  itself  a 
somewhat  different  character.  Then  the  problem  becomes 
not  merely  a  questioning  of  experience  for  the  instrument 
most  likely  to  be  successful  in  attaining  a  given  purpose. 
Even  the  bare  consideration  of  the  more  immediate,  as  well 
as  the  more  remote  consequences  of  conduct  is  modified  in 
such  a  case  as  this.  The  law  or  the  custom,  has  already 
said  iVb,    in   answer  to   other  similar  inquiries.      It   has 


6  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

apparently  solved  the  general  problem  in  a  negative  way. 
The  individual,  therefore,  must  go  on  to  inquire:  What 
will  the  government,  or  society,  do  to  me,  if  my  answer 
differs  from  theirs  ?  And  this  inquiry,  although  not  the 
same  thing,  is  very  intimately  associated  with  another  ques- 
tion :  What  do  my  fellowmen  consider  to  be  right  and  wrong 
forms  of  conduct? 

But  such  a  change  in  the  character  of  the  problem  of  con- 
duct, and  its  increased  need  of  deliberation  and  far-seeing 
choice,  prepares  the  way  for  raising  a  yet  more  fundamental 
and  difficult  inquiry.  For  here  the  feeling  and  judgment  of 
the  individual,  whether  he  take  the  point  of  view  from 
which  to  regard  the  consequences  of  his  act,  or  the  point  of 
view  from  which  moral  consciousness  strives  to  discern  the 
inherent  quality  of  the  act,  may  begin  to  ask  the  reason, 
Why?  True,  society  seems  to  have  clearly  indicated  its 
judgment  as  to  what  is  right,  what  wrong,  in  such  a  case  as 
this.  But —  just  now,  at  any  rate  —  perhaps  the  feeling  and 
judgment  of  the  individual  do  not  precisely  accord  with  the 
social  custom.  How  did  society  arrive  at  this,  its  seemingly 
corporate  conclusion  ?  By  what  reasons,  whether  in  the  way 
of  appeal  to  facts,  or  dialectic  from  assumed  principles,  or 
probable  inference  as  to  consequences,  can  others  justify  the 
right  to  control  my  decisions  on  matters  of  conduct?  And, 
furthermore,  what  shall  I  think  of  myself  in  case  I  venture 
to  choose  another  deed,  another  course  of  conduct,  than  that 
which  society  has  ordained?  Rarely,  it  may  be,  yet  some- 
times and,  if  at  all,  always  most  significantl}^  do  men,  even 
the  adults  of  the  common  herd,  raise  with  themselves,  or 
with  one  another,  problems  which  have  this  deeper  and 
vaster  significance. 

It  is  the  attempt  to  answer,  by  processes  of  reflective 
thinking  upon  a  basis  of  facts  of  experience,  such  practical 
questions  as  the  foregoing,  which  gives  rise  to  an  inquiry 
into  the  principles  of  human  conduct.     If,  then,  we  did  not 


THE  SPHERE   AND   PROBLEM   OF  ETHICS  7 

desire  to  avoid  at  the  beginning  of  our  inquiry  insignificant 
objections  and  fruitless  debating,  we  might  adopt  this  pre- 
liminary definition :  Ethics  is  the  Science  of  human  conduct. 
For  conduct  is  a  fact;  or  rather,  it  is  an  infinitely  varied 
and   ever-changing  network  of  facts.     It  affords  a  tangled 
skein  of  inquiries  which  require  a  methodical  consideration. 
And  although  one  may  easily  enough  dissent  from  Wundt's 
conception, — "Ethics  is  the  original  science  of  norms,"  — 
one  cannot  so  easily  disregard  the  significance  of  his  further 
declaration :  1  "The  estimate  of   the  value  of  facts   is   also 
itself  a  fact,  and  a  fact  which  must  not  be  overlooked  when 
it  is  there  to  see."     Now  if  we  may  treat  facts  of  human 
feeling,  imagination,  and  judgment  (whether  they  are  estab- 
lished by  a  direct  appeal  to  consciousness  or  in  some  other 
more  objective  and  historical  manner)  by  scientific  method, 
may  sift  them,  classify  them,  concatenate  and  explain  them, 
interpret  their  import  and  reason  speculatively  about  their 
implicates,   it  is  difficult  to  see  why  we  may  not  properly 
speak  of   a  possible  "science  of   ethics."     But  why  spend 
time  in  discussing  so  futile  an  inquiry  ? 

We  will  be  contented  then,  at  present,  simply  to  say  that 
ethics  results  from  the  scientific  (the  systematic  and  properly 
regulated)  study  of  human  conduct  —  its  sources,  its  devel- 
opment, its  sanctions,  and  its  most  general  principles.  The 
fuller  justification  of  this  rude,  fourfold  classification  of 
ethical  problems  may  be  left  to  appear  during  the  progress 
of  the  attempt  at  completing  our  task.  But  the  suggestion, 
if  not  the  authentication  of  it,  follows  from  a  reflective 
treatment  of  the  import  of  such  questions  as  have  already 
been  proposed.  All  these  questions  concern  human  conduct 
—  the  subject  matter  of  our  philosophizing  or  reflective 
thinking.  But  the  manifold  forms  in  which  the  questions 
recur  suggests  the  need  of  investigating  not  only  the  present 

1  Ethics :  The  Facts  of  the  Moral  Life  ;  I,  pp.  5  and  9.     [English  translation 
bv  Julia  Gulliver  and  Edward  Bradford  Titchener.] 


8  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

external  facts,  but  also  the  beginnings,  the  historical  on- 
going, the  rational  grounds  —  the  sanctions  and  the  princi- 
ples —  of  human  conduct. 

Even  this  brief  preliminary  definition  implies  the  further 
need  of  certain  very  profound  distinctions.  Taken  altogether, 
these  distinctions  require  the  addition  of  an  exceedingly  sig- 
niiicant  clause  to  our  conception  of  the  sphere  of  ethics. 
Let  us  then  enumerate  and  briefly  discuss  these  distinctions. 

And,  first,  the  sphere  of  ethics  can  be  defined,  and  its 
problem  understood,  only  by  making  a  distinction  between 
the  real  and  the  ideal,  between  what  is,  as  matter  of  actuality 
or  fact,  and  what  is  conceived  as  better  than  the  fact,  an 
idea  of  what  might  be,  or  should  be.  There  are  sciences 
of  actuality  so-called.  They  begin  with  the  individual 
facts;  they  derive  their  principles  by  generalization  from 
the  modes  of  the  actual  behavior  of  things  or  of  minds ;  their 
metaphysics  treats  speculatively  the  assumptions,  or  the 
most  fundamental  principles,  which  concern  what  has  actual 
being.  Ethics,  too,  begins  with  facts ;  it  makes  generaliza- 
tions that  are  based  upon  the  habitual,  actual  forms  of  the 
behavior  of  men.  But  so  long  as  human  conduct  is  consid- 
ered merely  as  fact,  and  the  forms  into  which  it  has  crystal- 
lized are  regarded  merely  as  actual  historical  developments, 
the  way  is  only  prepared,  but  not  entered  upon,  for  the 
discussion  of  the  more  distinctively  ethical  problems. 

Superficially  regarded,  the  words  used  to  describe  a  study 
of  human  conduct  —  especially  in  the  three  languages, 
Greek,  Latin,  and  German  —  seem  to  favor  the  conception 
of  ethics  as  a  purely  historical  or  anthropological  science. 
According  to  these  languages,  ethics  appears  to  be  a  science 
of  actually  existing  customs.  But  this  fact  is  itself  rela- 
tively unimportant  and  due  to  the  influence  of  the  termin- 
ology  employed   by  Aristotle   and   by  succeeding  writers.^ 

1  T^  yap  ^dos  dirh  rod  edovs  ex^t  r^v  ivoownlav:  Magn.  Moral.,  A.  6  (a  writing 
of  the  later  Aristotelian  school).     So  the  Latin  Moralis  in  Cicero,  Defato,  1. 


THE  SPHERE  AND  PROBLEM  OF  ETHICS      9 

Neither  Aristotle  nor  Cicero,  however,  for  a  moment  thought 
of  making  the  philosophy  of  conduct  deal  with  facts  alone, 
to  the  exclusion  of  men's  ideas  as  to  the  evaluation  of  what  is 
fact  by  comparison  with  some  sort  of  a  conceptual  standard. 
And  no  modern  writer  of  treatises  called  "  Data  of  Ethics  " 
succeeds  in  discussing  its  problems  without  constant  refer- 
ence to  conceptions  of  the  individual  and  of  society  concern- 
ing an  obligation  and  concerning  sanctions  that  transcend 
any  actually  existing  example. 

It  would,  indeed,  be  altogether  too  vague,  as  well  as  some- 
what misleading,  to  define  ethics  as  the  science  of  the  Ideal. 
Such  a  definition  would  not  difference  it  from  aesthetics,  or 
specify  its  most  characteristic  qualities.  It  must  also  be 
borne  in  mind  that  all  the  positive  sciences  are  largely  based 
upon,  and  interpenetrated  with  conceptions  which  are  not 
wholly  of  the  actual,  but  which  consist  largely  of  ideas  as  to 
what  might  be  or  should  be.  Otherwise,  their  devotees 
could  not  talk  intelligibly  of  norms  and  types,  etc.,  or 
describe  and  explain  the  individual  examples  in  terms  of 
a  theory  of  evolution.  It  is  the  character  of  its  ideal,  and 
the  way  in  which  the  individual  examples  are  brought  into 
relations  to  the  ideal,  which  chiefly  distinguishes  ethics  from 
all  the  other  sciences.  Nevertheless,  in  Professor  Sidg- 
wick's  contention  with  Mr.  Spencer  we  must  take  our  stand 
with  the  former  rather  than  the  latter,  in  his  conception  of 
the  proper  sphere  of  ethics.  ^  Ethics  does  not  primarily 
lead  us  to  deal  with  the  "doubly  ideal."  It  does  not,  in  the 
first  instance  aim  at  determining  the  ideal  forms  of  conduct 
under  ideal  conditions.  As  Aristotle  long  ago  said:  "Our 
inquiry  is  obviously  about  an  excellence  that  is  human^* 
(Nic.  Eth.,  I,  xiii,  5).  Ethics,  then,  however  it  may  finally 
carry  our  thought  and  imagination  into  Utopia,  or  into  the 
sphere  of  that  far-away,  ideally  perfect  social  community 
which   the   Biblical  writers  call   the   "Kingdom   of   God," 

1  See  p.  17  f.  and  the  note,  p.  20,  The  Methods  of  Ethics  (4th  ed.). 


10  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

primarily  treats  of  actual  facts  of  man's  conduct  under  the 
actually  existing  conditions  of  man's  historical  development. 
It  views  the  actual,  however,  in  the  lights  and  shadows  of 
the  ideal. 

By  an  Ideal  I  understand:  a  conception,  developed  by 
the  combined  activity  of  thought  and  imagination,  to  which 
there  is  not  necessarily  attributed  any  real  existence  as  its 
correlate,  but  which  appears  in  consciousness  as  an  object 
of  contemplation  or  of  aspiration.  But  this  conception  of 
the  ideal  leads  our  thoughts  at  once  to  another  distinction 
which  is  also  necessary  to  a  correct  conception  of  the  sphere 
of  ethics, — namely,  the  distinction  between  other  ideals  and 
the  specifically  ethical  ideal.  In  the  ethical  discussions  of 
the  Greeks  that  loosely  organized  but  comprehensive  and 
fascinating  idea  which  was  designated  "  the  Good  "  was  cen- 
tral and  controlling.  There  can,  of  course,  be  no  philoso- 
phizing of  an  ethical  sort  w^ithout  making  use  of  one  or  more 
elements  and  aspects  of  this  idea.  Moreover,  there  is  great 
significance  in  the  fact  that  the  human  mind  persists  in  its 
effort  to  free  these  elements  and  aspects  from  that  lack  of 
unity  which  they  exhibit  in  all  human  experience,  and  thus 
to  form  the  fair  and  alluring  picture  of  a  state  or  society  in 
which  they  shall  all  be  harmoniously  united.  The  bare  faith 
in  the  possibility  of  such  harmony  is  a  problem  for  ethics. 
The  firm  confidence  of  many  that  this  possibility  will  become 
realized  is  another  problem.  But  these  and  all  kindred 
problems  belong  fitly  to  the  later  theoretical  conclusions 
rather  than  to  the  preliminary  considerations  of  the  student 
of  ethics.  He  must,  however,  soon  be  brought  to  recognize 
the  fact  that  the  human  mind  invariably  constructs  several 
different  ideals,  or  at  any  rate  several  aspects  of  the  one 
highest  ideal;  and  that  the  concern  of  ethics  is  primarily 
and  chiefly  with  the  ideal  of  conduct. 

Subordinate  to  the  distinction  just  discussed  are  the  two 
following :  —  the  first  of   which  is  the  distinction   between 


THE  SPHERE  AND  PROBLEM  OF  ETHICS  11 

action  and  conduct.  It  is  not  mere  doing,  whether  of  this 
or  of  that  sort,  which  gives  to  the  student  of  ethics  his  pecu- 
liar problems.  Conduct  implies  something  more  than  action. 
Conduct  implies  the  consciousness  of  an  end  that  may  be 
striven  for ;  it  implies  the  knowledge  of  means  that  are 
adapted  to  the  attainment  of  the  end ;  it  implies  the  power 
of  choice  with  reference  to  both  end  and  means.  In  a  word, 
conduct  is  action  rationally  shaped;  it  is  the  doing  of  a 
Moral  Self.  Moral  action  is  not,  indeed,  a  specific  kind  of 
action,  set  apart,  as  it  v^ere,  for  some  definite  species  of 
external  performances,  to  the  exclusion  of  other  species.^  In 
fact,  the  presence  of  ethical  ideals  is  to  be  discerned  in 
everything  which  man  consciously  and  voluntarily  does. 
Higher  or  lower  degrees  of  these  characteristics  of  all  con- 
duct are  actually  found  as  far  back  in  history,  as  low  down 
in  ethical  or  intellectual  degradation  as  we  can  follow  the 
development  of  humanity.  In  his  eating  the  adult  human 
being  does  not  merely  feed.  In  his  drinking  he  does  not 
simply  sivill  his  drink.  He  raises  the  social  cup,  he  pours 
out  a  libation  to  the  gods ;  and  the  gods  at  any  rate  must  be 
treated  politely  by  the  most  shameless  and  gluttonous  of 
cannibals.  And  where,  as  amongst  the  various  Hindu 
castes  in  India,  custom  and  morality  and  religion  are  so 
confused  as  to  constitute  a  nearly  complete  enslavement 
of  all  the  activities  and  interests  of  human  life,  the  neces- 
sity and  validity  of  this  distinction  are  all  the  more  to  be 
emphasized. 

The  second  of  the  distinctions  which  follows  from  the 
attempt  to   confine   the  sphere  of  ethics   within   its   more 

1  I  sympathize  heartily  with  the  import  of  Prof,  Dewey's  declaration  (Out- 
lines of  Ethics,  p.  167) :  "  The  habit  of  conceiving  moral  action,  as  a  certain  hind 
of  action,  instead  of  all  action  so  far  as  it  really  is  action,  leads  us  to  conceive  of 
morality  as  a  highly  desirable  something  which  ought  to  be  brought  into  our 
lives,  but  which  upon  the  whole  is  not."  But  at  the  fourth  use  of  the  word  "  ac- 
tion "  we  must  change  it  to  conduct,  in  the  above  sentence.  Prof.  Dewey  has 
himself  previously  distinguished  action  from  conduct,  Ibid,  p.  3  f. 


12  '  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

appropriate  ideal  is  the  distinction  between  mere  character- 
istics of  being  and  the  moral  character,  in  the  ethical  sig- 
nificance of  the  latter  word.  The  character  of  men  is  never 
estimated  by  themselves  or  by  their  fellows  as  though  it 
were  simply  a  matter  of  fact.  In  that  interesting  symbolism 
of  language  which  shows  the  mysterious  feeling  of  kinship 
with  nature  on  man's  part,  we  find  the  really  significant 
truth  to  be,  not  that  man  regards  himself  as  a  being  devoid 
of  moral  character,  but  rather  that  he  regards  the  lower  ani- 
mals and  even  inanimate  objects  as  sharing  with  himself  in 
the  potentialities  of  character.  The  superstitious  savage 
does  not  so  much  excuse  his  offending  fellowman  for  his  bad 
character,  because  he  could  no  more  help  being  bad  than 
could  the  dog,  or  the  tree,  or  the  stone.  On  the  contrary, 
he  is  more  apt  to  consider  dog,  or  tree,  or  stone,  as  bad 
with  the  quasi-Qih.\QdX  judgment  and  feeling,  that  they,  too, 
ought  to  have  known  and  done  better!  In  man's  case  espe- 
cially, character  not  only  implies  disposition,  as  an  ethical 
potentiality ;  but  also  the  moulding  effect  of  conduct  on  the 
actual  characteristics  of  disposition.  We  might,  then,  say 
that  the  sphere  of  ethics  is  regulated  by  man's  ideals  of 
conduct  and  of  character. 

There  is  one  other  distinction  which  is  very  powerful  in 
determining  the  proper  conception  of  moral  philosophy. 
This  "might-be,"  this  "should-be,"  of  ethics  has  its  own 
peculiarity ;  and  this  peculiarity  is  better  expressed  by  the 
significant  phrase,  "ought  (or  ought  not)  to  be."  The 
sphere  of  ethics,  then,  covers  that  which  is  actual  in  human 
conduct  and  character  as  related  to  that  which  ought  to  be. 
Indeed,  this  last  distinction  is  so  essential,  so  fundamental, 
in  all  genuine  philosophy  of  conduct  that  one  almost  might 
affirm:  The  business  of  ethics  is  the  investigation  of  the 
ought  and  the  ought  not  in  conduct. 

It  will  be  found  that,  in  its  developed  form  the  feeling  of 
the  ought  stands  in  a  peculiar  relation  to  human  volitions, 


«  n 


THE   SPHERE  AND   PROBLEM   OF   ETHICS  13 

and  so  to  human  action  as  dependent  upon  volitions  —  i.  e., 
to  that  human  conduct  which  has  already  been  defined  as  the 
proper  subject  for  ethics.  For  the  feeling  of  obligation  con- 
stitutes a  sort  of  mandate  for  the  will.  The  recognition  of 
this  relation,  and  of  its  importance  for  all  the  more  strictly 
ethical  forms  of  discussion,  is  essential  at  the  very  beginning 
of  every  ethical  treatise.  On  the  contrary,  says  Schopen- 
hauer i^  "In  this  ethical  book  no  precepts,  no  doctrine  of 
duty  must  be  looked  for.  ...  In  general,  we  shall  not  talk 
at  all  of  '  ought, '  for  this  is  how  one  speaks  to  children  and 
to  nations  still  in  their  childhood,  but  not  to  those  who 
have  appropriated  all  the  culture  of  a  full-grown  age.  It 
is  a  palpable  contradiction  to  call  the  will  free,  and  yet  to 
prescribe  laws  for  it  according  to  which  it  ought  to  will. 
'Ought  to  will'  —  wooden  iron!'* 

Now  it  is  doubtless  true  that  the  "  must "  which  attaches 
itself  to  the  "  ought "  recognized  by  ethics  often  arises  on 
other  than  distinctively  ethical  grounds ;  not  infrequently  it 
begins  as  some  form  of  external  compulsion.  Thus,  for  ex- 
ample, the  unconquerable  feeling  of  the  orthodox  Jew  that 
he  ought  not  to  eat  pork  may  have  arisen  in  a  sanitary 
regulatiori.  Hinduism,  on  its  ethical  side,  is  so  full  of  ex- 
amples of  this  sort  that  its  practical  ethics  may  almost  be 
said  to  consist  wholly  of  them.  It  is  also  true  that  in  mul- 
titudes of  cases,  in  all  times  and  among  peoples  of  every 
degree  of  moral  advancement,  many  seemingly  strong  ethical 
repulsions  are  closely  akin  to  that  residuum  of  nausea,  in 
memory  and  in  imagination,  which  makes  some  persons  feel 
that  it  is  morally  wrong  to  indulge  at  all  in  tobacco  or  in 
alcohol.  But  just  now  our  inquiry  does  not  concern  the 
origin  of  this  feeling  answering  to  the  words  "I  ought;" 
nor  do  we  question  as  to  how  it  becomes  attached  to  any 
particular  piece  of  conduct.  Our  claim  is  that  its  essential 
and  unique  character  must  be  recognized  as  lying  at  the  very 

1  The  World  as  Will  and  Idea  (translation  of  Haldane  and  Kemp),  I,  p.  350  £ 


14  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

threshold  of  the  study  of  ethical  problems.  And  this  be- 
cause as  a  matter  of  fact  we  find  it  there  at  the  entrance ; 
and  not  only  at  the  entrance,  but  also  as  a  constant  and 
inseparable  companion  in  all  ethical  investigations.  Nor 
is  the  experience  of  the  individual  student  of  ethics  at  all 
individual  in  this  regard.  Every  student  of  ethics  meets 
everywhere  with  this  feeling,  this  conception  of  the  ought ; 
and  every  writer  on  ethics  does  actually  take  account  of  it. 
Schopenhauer  himself  is  by  no  means  an  exception  to  the 
universal  rule.  In  proof  of  this  statement,  were  proof  just 
now  necessary  or  desirable,  appeal  might  be  made  to  human 
moral  consciousness,  to  human  language,  to  literature,  and 
to  the  actions  of  men  in  society  and  in  all  human  history. 

The  sphere  of  ethics,  then,  is  not  a  domain  of  fact  to  the 
exclusion  of  ideals,  nor  a  domain  of  ideals  that  has  no  basis 
in,  or  application  to,  the  world  of  fact.  The  reflective 
thinking  which  a  moral  philosophy  proposes  does  not  con- 
sider the  conduct  of  men  simply  as  an  actual  event,  or  simply 
as  a  series  of  related  events  under  the  laws  of  habit,  or 
under  the  general  laws  of  physics,  biology,  and  psychology. 
Ethics  demands  to  know  something  more  about  its  subject 
than  the  bare  datum  of  its  existence,  its  origin  in  past  his- 
tory, its  probable  or  known  consequences  in  the  future.  It 
inquires  into  all  these  matters  diligently,  but  it  does  not 
regard  them  wholly  in  themselves  or  in  their  relations  to  one 
another.  It  reaches  its  more  ultimate  aim  only  when  it 
judges  all  human  conduct  in  its  relations  to  a  standard. 
And  that  standard  is  an  ideal  one,  a  construct  of  a  developed 
activity  of  thought  and  imagination  —  upon  a  basis,  to  be 
sure,  of  facts  of  feeling,  judgment,  and  action.  We  may 
then  complete  our  preliminary  conception  of  the  sphere  of 
ethics  by  adding  a  further  clause :  "  Ethics  results  from  the 
scientific  study  of  human  conduct  —  its  sources,  its  develop- 
ment, its  sanctions,  and  its  most  general  principles ''  —  as 
related  to  a  rational  ideal. 


THE  SPHERE  AND  PROBLEM  OF  ETHICS  15 

The  word  rational  is  doubtless  one  of  the  worst  abused 
terms  in  the  English  language;  it  is  almost  necessarily 
vaguely  comprehensive  in  its  meaning  when  employed  by  the 
student  of  any  form  of  philosophy  in  whatever  language. 
Witness  its  many  uses  by  Kant  in  his  three  immortal  Crit- 
iques having  "  reason "  as  their  subject  of  investigation. 
Recall  also  how  Aristotle  in  his  attempt  to  define  ethics  as 
a  kind  of  politics  affirms  of  the  total  function  of  man  that 
it  is  "  an  activity  of  soul  in  accordance  with  reason,  or  not 
independently  of  reason"  (Nic.  Eth.,  I,  vii,  14). ^  All  that 
ethics  is  entitled  to  mean  by  this  term  "  a  rational  ideal " 
cannot,  of  course,  be  described  or  justified  at  the  beginning 
of  an  ethical  treatise.  On  the  contrary  the  detailed  descrip- 
tion and  completer  justification  of  this  conception  is  one  of 
the  most  difficult  and  complex  problems  of  philosophy.  Nor 
should  we  make  any  large  advances  in  the  task  before  us  if 
we  dwelt  farther  upon  the  patent  truth  that  the  rational 
ideal  to  which  ethics  relates  conduct  and  character  is  itself 
an  ethical  ideal,  an  ideal,  that  is  to  say,  of  conduct  and  of 
character.  Like  the  phrases  of  those  who  define  ethics  as 
the  "science  of  moral  habits,"  and  then  by  destructive  criti- 
cism leave  the  mind  in  doubt  as  to  what  the  word  "  moral  " 
signifies,  we  should  thus  tarry  too  long  in  what  Plato  sarcas- 
tically calls  the  "  puppy-dog  "  stage  of  science. 

It  will  be  helpful,  however,  to  anticipate  at  the  very 
beginning  of  the  inquiry  the  large  conclusion  to  which  the 
inquiry  itself  will  bring  back  the  mind  again  and  again. 
The  rational  ideal  to  which  ethics  relates  all  the  particulars 
of  conduct  as  to  a  standard,  this  conception  of  that  which 
ought  to  be,  and  which  therefore  gives  the  law  to  which  the 
actual  in  conduct  feels  the  obligation  of  conforming,  is  the 
Ideal  of  a  Self,  or  "Person."     But,  of  course,  such  a  Self 

1  In  this  passage  the  phrases  /carcb  Koyov  and  /i^  iveu  \6yov  mean  "  according 
to,"  or  *'  at  least  implying,"  a  rational  standard,  as  nearly  as  we  can  reproduce 
them. 


16  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

cannot  exist  in  reality,  cannot  even  be  conceived  of,  as  an 
individual  separated  from  all  social  relations.  In  saying 
this,  the  problem  of  ethics  is  anticipated ;  it  is  brought  be- 
fore us,  indeed,  in  all  its  most  comprehensive  and  glorious 
significance.  This  problem  is  the  realization  of  the  Self,  in 
social  relations  with  other  selves,  and  in  accordance  with  a 
consciously  accepted  ideal. 

At  once  the  conclusion  follows  as  to  the  relation  in  which 
the  theory  of  ethics  stands  to  life.  Ethics  cannot  he  merely 
theoretical  and  speculative;  it  must,  from  its  very  nature, 
also  be  applied  and  practical.  A  "pure"  science  of  ethics, 
modelled  after  the  pattern  of  logic  or  of  mathematics,  is  an 
impossibility;  it  is  more  than  that:  it  is  an  absurdity 
equivalent  to  a  contradiction  in  terms.  And  this,  for  two 
reasons.  Ethics  has  no  body  of  principles  that  can  be  estab- 
lished apart  from  their  closest  contact  with,  their  embodi- 
ment in,  the  concrete  examples  of  human  history  and  of 
present  experience  with  its  changes  of  conditions  and  of 
requirements  from  age  to  age.  The  philosophy  of  conduct 
cannot  possibly  be  made  "pure,"  in  this  meaning  of  the 
word.  Neither  can  its  principles  be  held  as  mere  theory,; 
they  are  themselves  of  such  a  nature  as  to  demand  and 
to  guide  their  own  application  to  concrete  and  individual 
instances  of  conduct.  They  cannot  be  kept  "pure,"  in  this 
other  meaning  of  the  word.  The  general  statement  with 
regard  to  stealing,  for  example,  —  whether  it  take  the  form, 
"  The  good  man  does  not  steal, "  or  "  The  good  man  will  not 
steal,"  or  "The  good  man  ought  not  to  steal,"  —  cannot  be 
established  a  priori  or  derived  by  any  process  of  reasoning 
that  does  not  take  into  account  all  the  complicated  actual 
relations  of  the  changing  life  of  man.  But  neither  form  of 
this  general  statement  can  be  restrained  from  becoming  at 
once  the  practical  mandate:  "Thoushalt  not  steal."  And 
it  is  vain,  as  will  appear  subsequently,  to  attempt  to  estab- 
lish such  a  priori  moral  principles  by  confining  the  word 


THE   SPHERE   AND  PROBLEM  OF  ETHICS  17 

"  moral "  exclusively  to  the  deed,  or  to  the  consequences  of 
the  deed,  or  to  the  inward  intention  or  mental  disposition 
or  habit  out  of  which  the  deed  proceeds. 

The  sphere  of  ethics  is,  then,  peculiar  to  itself,  its  verita- 
ble own  and  no  other.  This  is  because  there  is  nothing  else 
which  is  so  similar  to  human  conduct,  when  conduct  is 
viewed  in  its  relations  to  its  own  ideal,  as  that  a  safe  com- 
parison may  be  made  between  its  proper  method  and  its 
conclusions  and  the  method  and  conclusions  of  ethics.  On 
this  account  we  should  not  classify  ethics  and  logic  together, 
as  Wundt^  does,  and  call  them  the  only  "purely  normative 
sciences."  But  more  misleading  is  the  view  of  Paulsen ^ 
who  —  to  be  sure,  in  a  rather  vacillating  way  —  ranks  ethics 
among  the  natural  sciences.  The  intimate  relations  of 
ethics  to  psychology  and  to  anthropology  are  obvious  enough 
from  its  very  conception  as  defined  in  the  most  preliminary 
and  tentative  manner.  Since  ethics  deals  with  the  conduct 
of  man,  it  must  know  man.  Since  the  whole  of  man  is  in- 
volved in  his  conduct,  since  all  his  faculties  of  body  and 
mind  are  employed  and  all  his  being  is  expressed  in  conduct, 
ethics  must  know  man  in  the  most  comprehensive  way  possi- 
ble. While  the  sphere  of  ethics  includes  much  from  both 
psychology  and  anthropology,  it  does  not  wholly  coincide 
with  either  of  the  two.  To  attempt  to  substitute  either  for 
ethics  is  to  miss  the  peculiar  province  of  ethics  altogether; 
but  even  to  speak  of  "  a  practical  ethics  without  psychology  " 
is  to  be  guilty  both  of  a  tautology  and  of  a  contradiction. 
For  there  is  no  ethics  that  is  not  practical,  and  there  is  no 
ethics  at  all  without  psychology. 

If,  then,  we  expand  somewhat  and  slightly  modify  his 
meaning,  it  will  be  found  that  the  first  great  writer  upon 
this  subject  in  a  systematic  way  had  a  not  unworthy  concep- 
tion of  the  work  he  had  undertaken  to  accomplish.  Aris- 
totle believed  himself  to  be  investigating,  not  simply  for 

1  Ethics,  I,  p.  7.  2  A  System  of  Ethics,  p.  13  f. 

2 


18  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

purposes  of  pure  science  but  also  in  order  the  better  to  guide 
himself  and  mankind  generally,  a  certain  kind  of  life.^ 
This  was  the  total  life  of  man,  so  far  as  it  may  be  brought 
under  the  control  of  the  will  and  consciously  directed  to  a 
rational  and  worthy  end.  The  standard,  as  I  shall  attempt 
to  show  in  detail,  which  sets  this  worthy  end,  and  which 
becomes  a  mandate  to  its  own  progressive  realization,  as 
well  as  a  law  for  the  evaluation  of  ourselves  and  of  others, 
is  the  Ideal  of  a  perfect  Self  existing  in  social  relations 
with  other  selves. 

1  Nic,  Eth.,  I,  vii,  12.     Zw^  irpaKTiK-fi  ris  rod  \6yov  exovros. 


CHAPTER  II 

METHODS  AND  DIVISIONS  OF  ETHICS 

The  question  of  the  sphere  of  ethics  is  complicated  with 
the  question  of  the  methods  of  ethics ;  and  this  latter  ques- 
tion determines,  in  large  measure,  the  question  of  the 
virtual,  if  not  the  explicit,  divisions  under  which  to  discuss 
the  various  ethical  problems.  How,  indeed,  shall  one 
approach,  in  the  effort  to  answer  such  inquiries  as  the  fol- 
lowing :  What  is  right  and  what  wrong  in  conduct?  Whence 
come  the  sanctions  which  men  attach  to  that  conduct  which 
they  call  right ;  and.  What  is  the  ultimate  end  at  which  all 
right  conduct  seems  to  aim? 

The  problems  of  ethics  may  be  approached,  first,  as  a 
study  of  the  subject  of  conduct,  of  the  moral  agent,  the  being 
under  moral  law,  the  sensitive  and  appreciative  conscious- 
ness which  is,  in  its  activity,  seeking  some  form  of  the  good. 
Or  second,  the  same  problems  may  be  approached  as  a  study 
of  the  kinds  of  conduct  actually  existing  and  objectively 
regarded;  together  with  the  consequences  which  attach 
themselves  to  the  different  kinds,  whether  such  consequences 
arise  from  the  action  of  other  men  or  from  the  working  of 
natural  laws.  Or,  finally,  a  speedy  if  not  immediate  resort 
may  be  taken  to  speculation;  the  effort  may  be  made  by 
processes  of  reasoning  as  nearly  as  possible  a  ^priori  and 
independent  of  facts  (subjective  or  objective)  to  arrive  at  the 
most  universal  and  unchanging  principles  of  conduct,  and  to 
determine  the  nature  of  its  ultimate  ideal. 


20  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

Of  these  three  methods  the  first  is  the  more  distinctively 
psychological ;  its  body  of  conclusions,  when  systematically 
arranged,  might  seem  to  merit  the  title  of  "psychological 
ethics. "  The  second,  however,  is  mainly  historical,  and  its 
pursuit  results  in  the  collection  and  classification  of  "data 
of  ethics,"  a  sort  of  science  of  morals,  ■—  rather  than  a  phil- 
osophy of  morality.  The  third  method,  of  course,  gives 
rise  to  metaphysics  of  ethics,  a  system  of  principles  which  is 
often  supposed  by  its  advocates  to  have  what  Kant  would  call 
an  "apodeictic  certainty."  As  a  matter  of  fact,  all  three 
methods  have  been  employed  to  some  extent  by  every  school 
of  writers  and  thinkers  on  ethics.  But  each  school  has 
shown  its  preference  for  one  of  these  methods,  —  and  usually 
to  the  relative  depreciation  of  the  other  two.  The  school  of 
Intuitionism  so-called,  naturally  enough,  has  relied  chiefly 
upon  the  psychological  method.  It  has  claimed  to  find  its 
principles  directly  revealed  to  the  self-conscious  mind  or  the 
feeling  heart;  and  the  sufficient  authority  and  guaranty  of 
the  principles  resides  in  the  fact  that  so  they  are  given 
(data)  in  human  self-consciousness.  All  forms  of  Hedon- 
ism, including  modern  Utilitarianism,  on  the  other  hand 
have  been  more  inclined  to  busy  themselves  with  the  collec- 
tion of  objective  "data  "  and  with  tracing  out  the  practical 
consequences  of  conduct  as  affecting  the  external  interests 
of  mankind.  The  rigorist  in  morals,  however,  since  from 
the  very  nature  of  his  claim  (and  here  Kant  is,  of  course, 
the  most  distinguished  and  typical  example)  he  cannot  possi- 
bly prove  it  by  an  appeal  to  experience,  has  the  more  readily 
resorted  to  the  "high  and  dry"  a  priori  method. 

An  instructive  historical  guide  to  the  right  method  in 
ethics  is  found  in  the  fact  —  to  repeat  —  that  all  the  schools 
of  ethics  which  attempt  to  give  any  complete  treatment  to 
its  principal  problems  feel  themselves  obliged,  in  a  measure, 
to  make  use  of  all  three  of  the  methods  just  described.  It 
is  necessary,  then,  to  examine  each  of  these  methods  and,  if 


METHODS  AND  DIVISIONS  OF  ETHICS  21 

possible,  to  determine  what  may  be  accomplished  by  their 
use  and  how  best  to  combine  them  for  purposes  of  successful 
research. 

The  psychological  method  investigates  the  being  of  man 
as  capable  of  conduct.  In  some  sort,  then,  it  is  the  primary 
and  the  most  promising  and  actually  rewarding  manner  of 
approaching  the  study  of  ethical  problems.  The  very  nature 
of  these  problems  is  such  as  to  force  the  conviction  that 
ethics  must  begin  by  a  study  of  human  nature  with  a  view 
to  discover  what  its  ideal  of  conduct,  in  fact,  is,  and  in  what 
respects  man  is  equipped  to  realize  this  ideal.  Where, 
indeed,  otherwise  than  as  it  is  datum  of  the  individual's 
consciousness,  can  one  possibly  look  for  the  answer  to  any 
inquiry  after  the  sources,  the  development,  the  sanctions,  the 
laws  of  the  moral  life?  Plato  was,  indeed,  "the  first  to  pro- 
pose for  ethics  a  psychological  foundation. "  But  he  is  entitled 
to  be  called  "the  first,"  because  that  which  all  previous 
thinkers  and  disputers  had  been  doing  in  only  a  half- 
conscious,  fitful,  and  fragmentary  fashion,  Plato  proposed 
to  render  more  thorough,  immediate,  and  systematic.  If 
others  went  to  the  human  soul,  as  to  an  oracle,  only  through 
the  heterogeneous  and  conflicting  means  of  the  prevailing 
customs,  opinions,  and  laws,  —  the  products  of  souls  in  their 
complicated  intercourse  with  one  another,  —  this  great 
searcher  for  the  truth  aimed  to  reach  the  priestess  herself, 
the  soul  in  its  immediateness,  and  to  hear  directly  from 
her  what  she  had  to  teach.  Of  his  psychological  division  of 
the  soul  as  a  foundation  for  a  theory  of  virtues,  it  has  been 
well  said:  "Rudimentary  as  it  may  now  appear,  it  was  an 
important  contribution  towards  the  scientific  theory  of 
morals."  And  all  the  discussions  and  conclusions  of 
Plato's  great  pupil,  the  founder  of  ethics  in  a  more  objective 
and  scientific  way,  are  distinctly  psychological.  This  re- 
mark is  true  of  Aristotle's  doctrine  of  the  end  of  the  moral 
life,  of  his  discussion  of  the  nature  of  virtue  in  the  large,  as 


22  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

it  were,  and  of  each  particular  kind  of  virtue ;  it  is  true  also 
of  his  doctrine  of  the  mean,  and  of  that  division  of  the 
virtues  which  a  modern  writer  has  said  "  may  well  be  called 
one  of  the  greatest  philosophical  discoveries  of  any  age." 

Undoubtedly  in  modern  times  there  has  been  a  strong  and 
perhaps  there  is  a  still  increasing  revolt  against  the  more 
purely  psychological  method  in  ethics.  To  this  there  is  the 
less  objection  if  the  revolt  be  directed  toward  the  unintelli- 
gent and  too  exclusive  use  of  the  distinctively  psychological 
method.  Bat  suppose  that,  for  the  moment,  we  displace  this 
method  entirely  by  the  more  objective  and  historical  method, 
and  then  try  to  think  ourselves  through  to  the  conclusions 
w4iich  can  be  reached  in  the  latter  way.  There  is  now 
before  us  a  vast,  a  practically  unmanageable  amount  of 
"data  of  ethics, '^  consisting  of  the  customs,  conventions, 
laws  written  and  unwritten,  of  men  of  different  ages  and  of 
every  degree  and  kind  of  intellectual  and  ethical  develop- 
ment. The  student  is  sternly  forbidden  to  copy  the  too 
proud  and  self-confident  attitude  toward  this  heterogeneous 
mass  of  the  doings  and  sayings  of  his  fellowmen  which 
Aristotle  assumed  when  he  declared  (Nic.  Eth.,  I,  iv,  6): 
"Nothing  but  a  good  moral  training  can  qualify  a  man  to 
study  what  is  noble  and  just."  But  the  purely  objective 
and  historical  method  in  ethics  is  inevitably  doomed  to 
failure.  In  other  words,  in  the  study  of  ethical  problems, 
one  must  find  much  both  of  the  facts  and  of  the  standard 
in  his  own  consciousness ;  the  "  good  judge"  in  such  a  case 
is  the  man  who  carries  within  him,  in  his  own  soul,  the 
highest  natural  and  acquired  qualifications  for  good  judg- 
ment. These  qualifications  are,  of  course,  themselves 
moral ;  they  are  nothing  else  but  the  character  of  the  indi- 
vidual soul  that  passes  the  judgment. 

Indeed,  in  the  last  analysis,  how  can  one  escape  some 
such  conclusion  as  this,  to  which  the  assumption  of  the 
psychological  standpoint  seems  to  compel  the  mind  ?     But 


METHODS  AND  DIVISIONS  OF  ETHICS  23 

how  does  the  case  of  ethics  differ  in  this  regard  essentially 
from  the  standpoint  necessary  to  be  taken,  from  which  to 
view  the  alleged  facts  and  principles  of  every  form  of  human 
science  ?  What  the  knower  knows,  or  can  know,  depends 
upon  his  own  intellectual  and  more  distinctively  moral  char- 
acter. If,  for  the  time  being,  we  extend  the  conception  of 
conduct  over  the  "  dianoetic "  as  well  as  over  the  more 
strictly  "moral'*  virtues,  or  excellencies,  this  dependence 
of  the  investigator  for  truth  on  his  own  moral  character  is 
as  essentially  true  (though  not  in  precisely  the  same  way, 
nor  to  the  same  extent)  of  the  natural  and  physical  sciences 
as  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct.  Truth  and  knowledge,  as 
well  as  ideas  of  duty  and  feelings  of  obligation,  are  deter- 
mined, in  the  last  resort,  for  every  individual  by  what  takes 
place  in  his  own  consciousness. 

In  the  case  of  ethics  especially,  how  shall  its  problems  be 
understood,  or  how  shall  any  conclusions  concerning  them 
which  have  even  the  aspect,  not  to  say  the  essence,  of  mor- 
ality be  reached,  unless  the  soul  interpret  the  data  of  facts 
into  terms  of  its  own  experience  ?  For  the  external  actions, 
or  the  custom  in  which  the  actions  of  many  individuals  have 
become  crystallized,  is  an  affair  of  interest  to  the  student  of 
ethics  only  as  it  issues  from,  and  terminates  in,  some  state 
or  more  permanent  condition  of  the  soul.  Each  fact  must 
be  interpreted  in  order  to  become  a  datum  of  ethics.  There 
is  only  one  interpreter  for  every  man,  who  must  constitute 
the  last  link  in  every  chain  of  communication  which  binds 
him  to  nature  and  to  his  fellows;  and  that  one  interpreter 
is  his  own  soul. 

Tn  general  the  results  which  words  and  things  significant 
of  "right"  or  "rights,"  of  "duty  "  and  "obligation,"  of  con- 
sequences of  "pain"  or  "pleasure,"  of  "interest"  and 
"  utility  "  —  and  whatever  other  words  and  things  the  study 
of  ethics  may  acquaint  us  with  —  shall  have  to  contribute 
toward  an  ethical  science  or  a  philosophy  of  morals,  can 


24  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

only  be  determined  by  a  process  of  interpretation.  Bata  of 
ethics  are  no  more  data  of  ethics  than  are  the  movements  of 
the  stars  in  their  courses  or  the  formation  of  crystals,  or  the 
growth  of  trees,  unless  they  are  rendered  into  facts  and  laws 
of  consciousness  by  the  mind  trained  in  psychology.  And  inas- 
much as  ethics  lays  stress  upon  one  particular  import  or  aspect 
of  the  consciousness  of  man,  its  data  require  for  their  fullest 
and  most  satisfactory  interpretation  the  mind  that  has  made 
itself  acquainted  with  the  Self  as  a  being  fitted  for  conduct. 

Nor  must  this  defence  of  the  psychological  method  in 
ethics  be  too  narrowly  apprehended.  For,  as  will  appear 
more  in  detail  subsequently,  all  of  man's  being,  so  far  as  it 
can  become  connected  with  his  conscious  states  and,  in  any 
way  or  to  any  degree,  brought  under  the  control  of  the  will, 
is  concerned  in  his  conduct  and  in  the  development  of  char- 
acter. This  statement  is  true  of  his  bodily  organs,  — of  his 
eye  and  hand,  of  his  sexual  and  digestive  mechanism.  Of 
course,  his  entire  outfit  of  psychical  characteristics  con- 
tributes toward  the  determination  of  questions  of  right  and 
wrong  in  conduct,  and  of  the  good  and  the  bad  in  character. 
Generalize  as  broadly  as  the  student  of  ethics  may,  and  rise 
as  loftily  on  the  wings  of  a  priori  speculation  as  he  can,  it 
still  remains  true  that,  not  only  the  practical  solution  of 
every  detailed  question  of  morals,  but  also  the  rational  solu- 
tion of  the  problems  regarding  the  fundamental  principles  of 
morality,  implies  the  actual  complex  structure  of  the  human 
being  in  its  relations  to  other  beings  known  to  be  similarly 
constituted,  on  a  basis  of  experience.  For  man's  moral 
nature  is  not  an  affair  of  moral  feeling,  or  of  moral  judgment 
alone ;  and  there  is  no  single  one  among  the  many  concep- 
tions which  have  attached  themselves  to  the  word  "con- 
science "  that  affords  a  complete  description  of  his  fitness 
for  the  moral  life.  Without  recognitive  memory,  without  a 
play  of  imagination  which  enables  him  to  rise  in  his  mental 
picturing  quite  above  the  levels  to  which  the  highest  of  the 


METHODS  AND  DIVISIONS  OF  ETHICS  26 

lower  animals  are  confined,  without  a  corresponding  develop- 
ment of  his  powers  of  observation  and  of  reasoning,  so  as  to 
anticipate  the  future  consequences  of  his  own  conduct  and 
of  that  of  other  men  as  an  important  part  of  his  anticipation 
of  the  future  operation  of  natural  laws,  man  could  not  possi- 
bly be  the  "moral  agent "  which  he  most  certainly  is. 

In  the  further  detailed  discussion  of  the  problems  of 
ethics  by  use  of  the  psychological  method,  the  investigation 
may  therefore  appropriately  pay  deference  to  the  tripartite 
division  of  the  current  psychology.  But,  inasmuch  as  the 
moral  life,  when  studied  in  its  characteristic  development, 
and  especially  in  connection  with  the  search  after  the  origins 
and  sources  of  that  development,  seems  to  justify  a  change 
in  the  customary  order  of  discussion,  I  shall  treat  first  of 
the  affectional  side  of  human  nature  in  its  total  equipment 
for  conduct.  This  distinction  will  lead  to  the  unfolding  of 
the  subject  in  the  following  order :  (1)  certain  forms  of  feel- 
ing in  which  man's  fitness  for  the  moral  life  consists,  so  far 
as  that  fitness  is  distinctively  a  matter  of  the  affections  and 
emotions;  (2)  the  judgments  and  conceptions  which  mark 
the  development,  on  the  side  of  intellection,  of  his  moral 
life ;  and  (3)  the  character  of  the  volition  which  man  has, 
or  attains,  and  which  makes  it  possible  for  him  to  adopt 
as  his  own  his  actions,  and  courses  of  action  (so  as  to  con- 
stitute a  veritable  piece  of  conduct),  and  to  choose  amidst  the 
conflict  of  ends  and  the  varied  means  such  ends  and  such 
means  as  agree  or  disagree  with  the  moral  ideal. 

In  all  the  discussions  of  psychological  ethics  most  of  the 
principles  employed,  and  many  of  the  conclusions  attained, 
must  be  borrowed  from  psychology.  For  although  all  of  the 
so-called  faculties  which  psychology  investigates  are  con- 
cerned in  conduct,  and  so  become  also  matters  of  ethical 
appreciation  and  concernment,  not  all  of  the  facts  and  laws 
relating  to  these  faculties  demand  renewed  investigation  at 
the  hands  of  the  student  of  ethics.     The  general  facts  and 


26  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

laws  of  consciousness,  and  of  the  different  classified  proc- 
esses or  states  of  consciousness,  may  —  nay,  must  —  be 
assumed  as  though  they  were  already  sufficiently  determined 
by  previous  studies  in  another  but  kindred  discipline.  No 
doubt  any  author's  views  upon  certain  problems  of  ethics 
will  be  largely,  although  perhaps  unwittingly  influenced  by 
his  psychological  positions.  This  will  be  especially  true  of 
such  psychological  problems  as  the  unity  and  reality  of  the 
human  soul,  or  mind,  the  question  in  debate  between  the 
advocates  of  determinism  and  so-called  "  freedom  of  the  will," 
the  existence  and  nature  of  the  higher  sentiments  and  emo- 
tions, the  nature  of  pleasure  and  pain,  and  the  relations  of 
mind  and  body.  For  myself,  I  can  neither,  on  the  one 
hand,  claim  to  approach  certain  ethical  problems  with  a 
complete  freedom  from  all  prejudice  due  to  opinions  already 
formed  and  advocated  on  related  psychological  problems; 
nor,  on  the  other  hand,  can  I  repeat  in  detail,  or  discuss 
anew,  the  conclusions  to  which  I  have  elsewhere  come 
respecting  truths,  half-truths,  and  errors  in  psychology.^  It 
is  enough  for  my  purpose  to  claim  the  right  to  make  use  of 
these  conclusions  and  discussions  to  the  best  advantage  of 
the  following  ethical  treatise. 

Let  it  be  assumed,  then,  that  the  use  of  the  psychological 
method  in  its  strictest  form  is  appropriate  to  the  subject 
matter  of  ethics ;  and  that  all  historical  and  objective  study 
only  prepares  the  mind  for  the  act  of  conscious  interpretation 
and  evaluation  of  the  data  of  ethics  collected  by  such  study, 
—  an  act  which  itself  makes  the  highest  possible  demands 
upon  the  analysis  of  the  trained  student  of  human  nature. 
But  here,  as  everywhere  in  the  use  of  the  psychological 
method,  the  dictum  of  Goethe  remains  in  full  force: 
"  The  gauge  that  from  himself  he  takes 
Measures  him  now  too  small  and  now  too  great." 

1  The  works  to  which  reference  is  here  implied  are  especially,  Psychology, 
Descriptive  and  Explanatory  (1894),  and  Philosophy  of  Mind  (1895),  both 
by  Charles  Scribner's  Sons,  N.  Y. 


METHODS  AND  DIVISIONS  OF  ETHICS  27 

Especially  is  this  true  of  ethics,  within  whose  sphere  the  hab- 
itual and  the  customary  is  with  the  multitude  of  men  almost 
inseparably  related  to  the  ideal  standard  which  is  set  up  by 
the  individual  soul.  The  intimacy  of  this  relation  between 
the  better  custom  and  the  ideal  standard  is  witnessed  to  by 
all  the  language  which  men  employ  when  treating  of  matters 
of  conduct,  and  by  the  impossibility,  in  many  particular 
cases,  of  drawing  legible  and  fixed  lines  so  as  to  determine 
where  custom  ends  and  morality,  in  the  stricter  and  higher 
meaning  of  the  word,  begins. 

Suppose,  for  example,  that  the  definition  of  Wundt  be 
adopted :i  "Custom,  in  the  sense  in  which  it  is  ordinarily 
used  to-day,  means  a  norm  of  voluntary  action  that  is  valid 
for  a  national  or  tribal  society  without  enforcement  by  ex- 
press command  or  by  punishment  for  non-conformity."  At 
once  it  must  be  admitted  that  every  essential  element  in  this 
definition  admits  of  degrees  of  variation  which  serve  to 
shade  the  conception  of  custom  off  toward  morality  on  the 
one  side  and  toward  law  on  the  other  side.  As  the  author 
himself  admits :  "  It  is  true  that  custom  finds  its  own  means 
of  compulsion."  But  it  is  not  so  obviously  true,  or  it  is  not 
true  at  all,  that  "  these,  like  custom  itself,  are  never  of  the 
obligatory  kind.  They  consist  neither  in  subjective  com- 
mandments like  the  moral  laws,  nor  in  objective  menaces 
like  the  laws  of  the  state."  For  in  multitudes  of  cases,  and 
indeed  as  a  general  rule,  the  custom  is,  in  the  consciousness 
of  the  individual  (and  often  rightfully)  a  "  subjective  com- 
mandment like"  a  moral  law;  and  the  menaces  which 
threaten  him  who  breaks  the  "  cake  of  social  custom  "  are 
quite  as  objective  and  as  terrifying  as  any  enacted  by  the 
laws  of  the  state.  Moreover,  there  is  constant  interchange 
of  status  amongst  all  these  three  —  namely,  custom,  law, 
and  morality.  This  interchange  is  essential  to  man's 
ethical  development.     Under  the  influence  of  the  law  of  the 

1  Ethics,  I,  p.  151  f. 


28  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

state,  or  of  the  subjective  commandment,  either  of  which 
may  easily  enough  at  its  beginning  only  express  the  opinions 
and  the  will  of  a  few  individuals  regarding  some  particular 
matter  of  conduct,  the  custom  forms  and  grows  and  widens 
its  sphere  of  influence.  Under  the  same  legal  or  moral 
influence  the  custom  may  be  broken  down.  Or,  on  the 
contrary,  the  development  of  the  custom  may  render  the  law 
nugatory,  a  dead  letter ;  or  the  same  development  may  quite 
transform  the  character  of  the  subjective  mandate,  the  voice 
of  conscience,  the  so-called  "voice  of  God."  Instances  of  all 
these  interrelated  transformations  are  not  so  rare  that  they 
need  to  be  cited  in  the  present  connection.  They  are,  in- 
deed, so  numerous  as  to  constitute  almost  the  entire  valuable 
data  of  historical  and  evolutionary  ethics.  The  evolution 
of  that  marvellous  and  formidable  compound  of  social  cus- 
toms, religious  ideas,  and  ethical  conceptions  and  opinions, 
which  constitutes  the  life  atmosphere  of  the  modern  Hindu 
is  made  up  of  examples.  Not  less  so  the  more  recent 
history  of  how  this  compound  is  slowly  disintegrating.  But 
the  same  thing  is  true  of  those  reactions  of  the  popular  moral 
consciousness  on  its  environment  which  belong  to  the  daily 
experience  of  us  all. 

The  student  of  ethics  who  would  take  account  only  of  the 
dictates  of  his  own  soul  —  however  cultured  and  fair  —  can 
never  find  therein  the  sufficient  data  for  a  science  or  a  phil- 
osophy of  human  conduct.  He  may,  indeed,  justly  say :  "  I, 
too,  am  a  man."  He  may  even  fit  himself  by  bestowing 
analysis  and  reflection  upon  his  own  moral  consciousness, 
for  the  righteous  claim  to  know  more  than  ordinarily  well 
what  belongs  to  human  moral  consciousness.  But  others, 
too,  are  men.  They,  too,  furnish  worthy  data  of  ethics. 
And  inasmuch  as  they  cannot  appear  in  propria  persona 
before  the  investigator  and  testify  out  of  a  full  mind  and 
heart  what  they  think  and  feel  about  the  right  and  wrong 
of  conduct,  the  good  and  bad  of  character,  their  testimony 


METHODS  AND  DIVISIONS   OF  ETHICS  29 

must  be  taken  in  a  more  indirect  and  external  way.  In  all 
this  there  are  some  obvious  advantages.  For  although  the 
real  meaning  of  the  testimony  as  thus  obtained  is  more 
doubtful,  and  the  voice  of  the  witnesses  is  at  first  appallingly 
conflicting,  the  generalizations  possible  are  placed  upon  a 
broader  basis,  and  the  insights  into  eternal  and  universal 
moral  principles  are  more  capable  of  being  defended  and 
of  being  transmitted  to  other  minds. 

The  historical  and  objective  method  must,  therefore,  be 
combined  with  the  psychological  and  more  purely  subjective 
method  in  all  successful  study  of  ethics.  Indeed,  there  is 
much  to  commend  the  attempt  of  a  modern  writer  ^  to  com- 
bine the  two  in  the  claim  that  the  straight  road  to  ethics  lies 
through  ethnic  psychology ;  and  this  is  defined  "  as  the  history 
of  custom  and  of  ethical  ideas  from  the  psychological  stand- 
point." But  after  all,  whether  the  path  followed  be  de- 
scribed as  belonging  to  one  method,  or  to  two  allied  methods, 
is  not  a  matter  upon  which  great  stress  need  be  laid.  The 
history,  the  objective  facts,  must  be  regarded ;  otherwise  our 
attempt  at  a  science  of  ethics  is,  at  best,  only  the  "confes- 
sions of  a  fair  soul. "  But  this  history,  these  objective  facts, 
must  be  interpreted,  must  be  rendered  into  terms  intelligible 
to  the  individual's  moral  consciousness.  Otherwise  so-called 
"  data  of  ethics  "  are  not  more  ethical  than  are  the  facts  with 
which  the  merely  narrative  historian  deals.  They  are  mere 
chronicles  of  deeds,  not  genuine  data  of  ethics.  Especially 
is  it  true  that  the  comprehensiveness  and  loftiness  of  the 
moral  Ideal  which  each  investigator  holds  aloft  in  his  own 
conscious  soul  will  chiefly  determine  his  attitude  toward  the 
sanctions  and  ultimate  principles  of  human  conduct. 

When  the  data  have  been  sufficiently  collected,  whether  by 
the  psychological  or  by  the  historical  method  —  or  still 
better,  by  a  skilful  combination  of  both  —  the  problems 
which  are  implicated  in  the  data  require  further  treatment 

1  Wundt,  Ethics,  I,  p.  vi. 


30  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

by  reflective  thinking.  Every  appeal  to  human  moral  con- 
sciousness reveals,  in  its  dawn,  rise,  and  fuller  effulgence,  a 
certain  ideal  which  solicits  and,  in  some  sort,  compels  the 
allegiance  of  the  human  mind.  Conceptions  have  to  be 
recognized,  which,  although  admitting  of  an  almost  indefi- 
nite variety  of  detailed  application,  have  a  universal  and 
unchanging  import;  they  come  before  the  student  of  ethics 
for  analysis,  and  for  adjustment  in  that  system  of  ultimate 
principles  and  most  inclusive  ideas  which  philosophy  aims 
to  establish.  Just  as  every  sphere  of  facts,  when  subjected  to 
scientific  treatment  shows  a  residuum  of  problems  of  a  more 
ultimate  kind,  which  must  be  handed  on  to  philosophy  for 
speculative  discussion,  —  so  especially,  ethics. 

Man  is  a  speaking,  social,  and  religious  being.  All  these 
attributes  are  true  of  him,  so  far  as  the  most  penetrating  re- 
search can  discover,  wherever  we  find  him  in  time  and  space, 
and  in  whatever  stage  of  his  evolution  in  history.  But 
speech,  social  intercourse,  and  religious  faith  and  worship 
are  all  species  of  conduct.  And  the  man  who  uses  language, 
who  transacts  business  and  enters  into  relations  of  friend- 
ship or  enmity  and  strife  with  his  fellows,  who  prays  and 
sacrifices  and  contracts  the  obligations  of  membership  in  the 
religious  community,  is  one  and  the  same  man.  He  it  is 
also,  who  develops  the  arts  and  sciences;  and  who  makes 
practical  application  of  them  to  the  amelioration  or  degrada- 
tion of  the  conditions  of  human  living.  This  being  is  born, 
at  one  and  the  same  time,  into  the  world  of  nature,  into  the 
society  of  his  fellows,  and  into  what  he  comes  to  believe  are 
more  or  less  real  and  vital  relations  to  the  gods.  His  con- 
duct is  a  matter  that  has  to  do  with  right  and  wrong  adjust- 
ments in  all  these  activities  and  relations.  What  Muirhead  ^ 
seems  to  think  has  already  come  true,  —  namely,  "  the  dis- 
solution of  the  ancient  partnership  between  philosophy  and 
its  various  branches  "  and  the  reduction  of  ethics  to  a  purely 
1  The  Elements  of  Ethics,  p.  11  f. 


METHODS  AND  DIVISIONS  OF  ETHICS  31 

empirical  science,  —  can  never  become  true.  Such  a  rending 
of  human  nature  as  is  implied  in  this  dissolution  is  impos- 
sible; just  as  is  also  the  implied  result  of  restricting  the 
sphere  of  philosophy  with  its  method  of  reflective  thinking. 

And,  indeed,  no  thorough  attempts  at  a  so-called  "science 
of  conduct "  have  ever  been  made  (less  even  than  formerly, 
in  these  later  days  when  "empirical  science"  is  so  boastful 
in  its  claim  to  cover  the  entire  field  to  the  exclusion  of  meta- 
physics) which  did  not  largely  resort  to  the  method  of  specu- 
lative philosophy.  What  Professor  Watson  says  ^  was  true 
of  the  Sophists  is  true  of  those  who,  to-day,  advocate  a 
practical  ethics  "without  metaphysics."  "The  main  idea 
common  to  them  all  was  that  customary  morality  was  not 
absolute,  but  was  a  fair  subject  of  discussion  and  criticism." 
No:  customary  morality  is  not  absolute.  The  thinker  over 
the  problems  of  human  conduct,  whatever  his  method  or 
school,  has  never  found  himself  able  to  identify  the  cus- 
tomary with  the  absolutely  right.  But  whence  comes  this 
persistent,  this  provoking  idea  of  "  the  Absolute  "  into  all  our 
discussions  of  ethics  ?  Why  cannot  the  investigator  stick  to 
the  proper  sphere  of  a  truly  empirical  science  and  refuse  to 
discuss  or  even  consider  the  conceptions  that  are  tainted  with 
this  metaphysical  idea  of  an  absolute? 

It  will  appear  that  the  distinctively  ethical  problems  of  a 
more  ultimate  character  with  which  the  metaphysics  of 
ethics  finds  itself  compelled  to  deal,  concern  chiefly  the  rela- 
tions of  human  conceptions  of  the  Right  and  the  Wrong  in 
Conduct  to  that  which  has  Reality.  What  is  it  to  be  really 
right?  What  Ground  in  reality  has  the  Right?  Is  the 
World- Ground  an  ethical  Being;  and  is  the  really  existent 
System  of  beings  an  ethical  system?  Problems  which  have 
the  virtual  significance,  if  not  the  exact  form  of  such  ques- 
tions as  the  foregoing,  inevitably  emerge  when  we  try  to 
think  ourselves  straight  through  the  most  profound  and 
1  Hedonistic  Theories,  p.  11. 


32  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

interesting  experiences  of  man  regarding  the  sources,  the 
development,  the  sanctions,  and  the  final  principles  of  human 
conduct.  And  so  the  metaphysics  of  ethics  must  try  to 
bring  the  ethical  conceptions  of  mankind  into  harmony  with 
the  best  philosophical  cognitions  and  opinions  respecting 
the  nature  and  final  purposes  of  the  really  existent  World 
and  its  Ground. 

Making  use  to  the  best  of  my  ability  of  all  three  of  the 
proper  methods  of  ethics,  I  shall,  therefore,  attempt  the  fol- 
lowing task :  —  to  investigate  the  nature  of  man  as  moral 
(capable  of  conduct),  to  classify  and  discuss  the  different 
forms  of  his  conduct  as  coming  under  moral  law  and  con- 
stituting the  so-called  "duties  "  and  "virtues,"  and  to  treat 
speculatively  the  ultimate  ethical  conceptions  regarded  as 
having  their  ground  in  the  existing  system  of  the  Universe. 
Such  a  treatment  naturally  results  in  the  three  following 
divisions  of  the  one  treatise  of  the  Philosophy  of  Conduct: 
(1)  The  Moral  Self;  (2)  The  Virtuous  Life;  and  (3)  The 
Nature  of  the  Eight.  Of  these  three  the  first  part  is  mainly 
psychological,  the  second  mainly  historical  and  objective, 
the  third  mainly  critical  and  speculative.  But  in  each  of  the 
three  parts  the  three  branches  of  the  one  method  must  be 
employed  in  combination. 

Upon  the  study  of  ethics  thus  pursued  the  following 
remarks  now  seem  appropriate.  First :  Ethics,  so  far  as  it 
can  be  rendered  scientific,  is  one  of  the  sciences  of  man. 
Hence  its  dependence  upon  psychology  and  anthropology  is 
to  a  certain  extent  absolute.  Hence  also,  second:  Ethics, 
like  any  other  similar  discipline,  should  begin  inductively. 
It  should  strive  to  plant  itself  upon  a  basis  of  undoubted 
facts,  and  from  this  basis,  with  a  constant  attention  to  the 
demands  for  a  frequent  return  to  this  basis,  proceed  to  the 
discussion  of  speculative  problems.  In  this  way,  third, 
ethics  becomes  an  important  and  even  necessary  pedagogic 
for  the  other  sciences  or  disciplines,  which  deal  with  the 


METHODS  AND  DIVISIONS  OF  ETHICS  33 

conduct  of  man,  —  especially  for  law,  economics,  politics, 
and  theology. 

What  definite  and  defensible  results  may  reasonably  be 
expected  from  this  combination  of  the  methods  appropriate 
to  the  systematic  study  of  human  conduct  ?  To  this  inquiry 
only  the  actual  achievements  gained  by  each  student's  efforts 
can  give  the  satisfactory  reply.  But  Aristotle's  caution 
applies  to  all  alike.  It  is  not  fitting,  in  accordance  with  the 
very  nature  of  the  subject  to  expect,  or  even  to  seek  for,  that 
more  perfect  accuracy  which  is  demanded  of  the  physical 
and  natural  sciences.  The  haunting  consciousness  that 
ethics  did  not  admit  of  a  strictly  scientific  construction 
seems  to  have  accompanied  Aristotle^  in  all  his  work  of 
investigation.  Neither  in  respect  of  minuteness  of  detail, 
nor  of  mathematical  exactness,  nor  of  definiteness,  nor  of 
finish,  nor  of  justifiable  subtlety  of  argument  shall  we  ex- 
pect, or  strive,  to  rival  the  work  of  the  physicist,  the 
chemist,  or  even  the  physiologist  or  biologist. 

^  See  his  declaration,  Koi  ixplfieiav  fi^  bfioioas  4v  &ira<Tiv  iirt^riTuv  (Nic.  Eth.,  I, 
vii,  18).  Here  and  elsewhere  the  conception  of  aKplfina  seems  to  include  something 
of  all  these  five  characteristics  of  a  typical  scientific  investigation  :  ( 1 )  rainateness 
of  detail,  (2)  mathematical  exactness,  (3)  definiteness  of  form,  (4)  finish  of  form, 
and  (5)  subtlety,  —  especially,  perhaps  (1),  (2),  and  (5).  How  tlie  consciousness 
of  this  necessary  lack  of  scientific  perfection  did  haunt  Aristotle  we  learn  from 
his  repeated  references  to  the  subject.  (See  also  II,  ii,  iii,  and  iv).  Compare  the 
note  to  the  passage  in  Sir  A.  Grant's  The  Ethics  of  Aristotle,  I  p.  449  f. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   CONCEPTION  OF  THE  GOOD 

There  is  a  certain  universal  way  of  human  thinking  and 
acting,  if  not  a  certain  determinate  form  of  conception, 
which  connects  the  subject  of  ethics  with  a  number  of  closely- 
allied  forms  of  inquiry.  Indeed,  so  close  is  the  connection 
that  the  investigation  of  the  actions  of  men  from  the  point 
of  view  held  by  this  conception  has  often  been  made  the  most 
important  part  of  entire  ethical  systems.  Undoubtedly  all 
adult  human  beings  give  much  consideration  to  what  is  "  good  " 
or  "bad  "  for  them  to  experience ;  and,  accordingly,  they  hab- 
itually act  with  the  intention  to  secure  as  much  as  possible 
of  what  they  consider  good  and  to  avoid  as  much  as  possible 
those  experiences  which  they  consider  bad.  Writers  on  the 
history  of  ethical  opinion  are  fond  of  reminding  us  that, 
whereas  the  modern  Occidental  man  dwells  more  upon  con- 
ceptions of  rights,  duties,  and  the  moral  law,  the  ethics  of 
ancient  Greece  laid  stress  upon  the  conception  of  the  Good. 
Certainly  this  Idea  was,  in  the  Platonic  system  of  thinking, 
not  only  the  supreme  ruler  over  all  the  other  ethical  ideas 
but  the  chief  and  lord  over  all  those  ideas  with  which  the 
philosopher  found  himself  concerned  in  his  efforts  to  under- 
stand the  problems  of  the  physical  world  and  of  human  life. 
The  predominance  of  this  conception  in  the  Greek  ethics  as 
compared  with  the  ethical  studies  of  modern  times  is,  how- 
ever, scarcely  more  than  apparent.  The  feelings,  thoughts, 
and  actions  of  men,  which  cluster  about  and  follow  along 
with  this  conception,  are  always  an  inseparable,  an  integral 


THE   CONCEPTION  OF  THE  GOOD  35 

part  of  moral  philosophy.  It  is  only  as  discerning  and 
desiring,  as  estimating  and  striving  for,  whatever  is  good 
that  man  is  capable  of  dutiful  and  virtuous  conduct,  or  is  a 
subject  of  moral  law.  Some  study  of  this  conception  is, 
then,  almost  a  necessary  prelude  to  the  fuller  analysis  of  the 
nature  of  a  Moral  Self. 

Only  slight  examination,  however,  is  necessary  to  convince 
one  how  vague  and  yet  comprehensive  are  the  mental  proc- 
esses which  answer  to  such  a  phrase  as  that  under  considera- 
tion. The  criticism  of  this  conception  is  one  of  the  most 
important  and  difficult  tasks  in  the  philosophy  of  conduct. 
Every  one  knows  what  particular  smells,  tastes,  sounds, 
and  sights  he  considers  good,  what  bad ;  and  perhaps,  what 
he  should  more  readily  characterize  as  neutral  or  indifferent. 
It  is  more  difficult  for  men  generally  to  say  which  of  these 
two  contradictory  epithets  they  should  wish  to  apply  to 
those  more  elaborate  combinations  of  sensuous  impressions 
that  are  discoverable  in  even  the  most  meagre  "  works  of  art," 
so-called.  Is  this  picture,  or  piece  of  sculptured  stone,  or 
moulded  metal,  good  or  bad  ?  Do  you  approve  or  disapprove 
of  this  tune  ?  Such  questions  as  these  are  answered  with 
more  hesitation  and  obvious  doubtfulness  than  questions 
which  concern  the  simpler  sensuous  impressions. 

But  now,  again,  if  inquiry  be  raised  as  to  any  piece  of 
conduct,  whether  it  be  good  or  bad,  it  is  interesting  to 
notice  how  the  mental  attitude  of  the  majority  of  men 
stands  toward  such  an  inquiry.  In  case  the  particular  con- 
duct admits  of  easy  classification  under  any  one  of  several 
already  accepted  titles,  the  judgment  as  to  its  character  may 
be  promptly  rendered,  more  or  less  suffused  with  the  appro- 
priate feeling.  Is  this  particular  act  of  stealing,  lying, 
murder,  or  impurity,  good  or  bad  ?  Every  adult  member 
of  society  has  a  judgment  in  store  and  ready  to  be  applied 
to  such  a  question,  as  a  part  of  his  stable  equipment  for  the 
moral  life  in  society.    Even  the  thief,  the  liar,  the  murderer, 


83  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

the  rake,  need  not  hesitate  long  over  his  choice  of  epithets : 
this  particular  theft,  or  lie,  or  murder,  or  seduction,  may  in 
the  vicious  man's  judgment  be  at  least  partly  good  (because  of 
the  manner  of  its  performance  or  the  end  secured  by  it) ;  but 
another  deed,  quite  similar  in  its  external  characteristics 
may  for  some  reason  be  deemed  either  wholly  or  largely  bad. 

But  if  the  particular  piece  of  conduct  to  be  judged  is  not 
easily  classified,  or  if  it  is  complicated  with  intricate  con- 
siderations of  motive  and  of  consequences,  or  if  it  is  taken 
for  its  answer  before  different  individuals  whose  social  con- 
ditions vary  greatly  or  whose  moral  consciousness  has  been 
quite  differently  trained,  then  the  greatest  variety  of  judg- 
ments and  emotions  will  be  elicited.  Some  will  pronounce 
it  "  good ; "  but  others,  with  equal  confidence,  will  say,  "  bad. " 
And  not  a  few,  perhaps,  will  be  puzzled  to  know  what  answer 
they  shall  give. 

Judgments  about  the  good  and  the  bad  appear,  then, 
to  indicate  a  somewhat  important  difference  in  the  way 
in  which  men  use  these  words,  depending  upon  whether  the 
object  is  a  matter  of  sensuous,  of  more  nearly  aesthetical, 
or  of  more  definitely  ethical  appreciation. 

"  What  is  most  just  is  noblest,  health  is  best, 


Wnat  IS  most  just  is  noblest,  health  is  t 
Pleasantest  is  to  get  your  heart's  desire 


When  quoting  this  Delian  inscription,  Aristotle  (Nic.  Eth., 
I,  viii,  14)  announces  the  conclusion  that  "happiness  is  at 
once  the  best  and  noblest  and  pleasantest  thing  in  the  world, 
and  these  are  not  separated. "  But  the  conclusion  is  hasty 
and  ill-taken,  and  based  upon  insufficient  grounds.  The  im- 
portant thing  now  to  notice,  however,  is  that,  plainly,  this 
same  Delian  inscription  means  to  emphasize  the  undoubted 
fact  of  a  popular  classification  of  the  goods.  The  noble,  the 
practically  useful  and  desirable,  the  sweet,  — these  are,  in- 
deed, all  good ;  but  they  are  not  precisely  the  same  kind  of 
good.     How,  then,  do  they  differ  as  kinds  of  the  Good ;  and 


THE   CONCEPTION   OF  THE  GOOD  87 

What  is  that  common  characteristic  which  they  all  possess, 
so  that  they  can  all  be  called  good  ? 

The  most  primary  court  of  appeal  in  answer  to  such  in- 
quiries as  those  raised  above  is,  of  course,  psychological 
analysis.  But  such  analysis,  in  order  to  be  trustworthy,  must 
be  based  upon  a  wide  acquaintance  with  the  workings  of  the 
human  mind.  It  will  subsequently  be  found  that  the  funda- 
mental differences  between  the  important  schools  of  ethics 
are  deeply  concerned  with  the  discussion  of  the  nature  of  the 
Good;  and,  accordingly,  no  thorough  treatment  of  the 
subject  can  properly  anticipate  the  critical  examination  of 
the  claims  of  these  schools.  But  a  preliminary  psychologi- 
cal inquiry  will  prove  helpful. 

The  most  important  thing  to  notice  respecting  this  concep- 
tion may  be  stated  as  follows:  Every  form  and  degree  of 
what  men  call  either  good  or  bad  has  reference  to  a  state  of 
sentient  and  conscious  life.  And  all  the  higher  and  more 
significant  forms  have  reference  to  the  experiences  of  a  self- 
conscious  life.  There  is  no  good  that  is  not  a  good  which  is 
serviceable  for  or  actually  realized  in  some  condition  of  a 
Self.  We  try,  indeed,  to  picture  to  ourselves  some  remnant 
of  good  truth  and  beauty  belonging  to  the  system  of  things, 
if  all  conscious  selves  were  removed  from  existence.  The 
extinction  of  self-conscious  life  is,  to  be  sure,  in  the  philoso- 
phy of  Schopenhauer  and  of  some  of  the  Vedantic  writings, 
the  alone  true  good,  the  end  which,  for  the  good  man,  is  de- 
voutly to  be  wished.  The  object  which  Kant  coupled  with 
the  moral  law  within,  as  exciting  his  highest  admiration  for 
its  noble  goodness,  was  the  starry  heavens  above.  If  the 
good  of  the  extinction  of  conscious  life  could  be  attained, 
there  would,  indeed,  be  no  remaining  badness  in  the  uni- 
verse, of  any  degree  or  kind.  But,  then,  there  would  also 
be  no  good.  For  the  only  aesthetical  and  admirable  good 
which  the  science  of  astronomy  could  elicit  was  in  Kant's 
own  appreciative  soul,  or  in  the  conscious  state  of  some  other 


38  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

soul,  —  not  excluding  the  imagined  happiness  of  the  World- 
Soul  in  contemplating  its  own  cosmogonic  achievements. 
To  talk  of  good,  or  of  bad,  of  any  kind  or  degree,  without 
reference  to  good  or  bad  states  and  activities  of  a  Self  is  to 
talk  the  unimaginable  and  the  absurd.  Only  as  we  mentally 
endow  things  with  some  of  the  qualifications  of  selfhood  or 
consider  them  with  reference  to  selves,  can  we  bring  things 
under  this  conception.  Only  as  we  make  quasi-  or  partial 
selves  out  of  the  animals  can  we  apply  the  same  terms  to 
them.  It  is  the  projection  into  the  Other  than  Self,  of  our 
own  conscious  happiness  or  unhappiness,  beauty  or  ugliness, 
moral  goodness  or  badness,  which  induces  and  justifies  the 
use  of  the  conception.  What  is  good  ?  What  is  bad  ? 
States  of  selves,  and  what  has  reference  to  states  of  selves. 
Beyond  such  states,  or  without  reference  to  such  states,  there 
is  no  good,  no  bad,  either  instrumental  or  final. 

Taking  our  start  from  this  subjective  and  yet  unalterable 
and  universal  point  of  view,  we  can  easily  see  how  it  is  that 
every  thing,  and  every  event  or  deed,  may  both  merit  and 
receive  the  title  of  good,  or  its  opposite,  as  it  is  considered 
from  an  indefinite  number  of  subordinate  and  more  special 
points  of  view.  This  tool,  for  example,  is  good  for  one  kind 
of  service,  but  bad  for  another.  This  article  of  diet  is  good, 
if  the  end  be  the  production  of  pleasure,  but  bad  if  the  end 
of  health  be  kept  in  view.  Or  it  is  good  for  both  pleasure 
and  health  in  the  case  of  one  digestive  apparatus  and  bad  for 
both  purposes  in  the  case  of  another  person's  digestion. 
This  instrument  is  good  for  the  good  deed  of  the  executioner, 
and  equally  good  for  the  bad  deed  of  the  murderer.  The 
pure  pleasure  of  the  peasant  in  the  contemplation  of  his  bad 
picture  of  the  Madonna  is  good ;  and  good  or  bad  may  be  the 
act  of  worship  according  to  what  it  means  for  the  worshipper 
or  according  to  its  effect  upon  others.  And  does  not  every 
one  know  that  it  is  indeed  "an  ill  wind  (however  destructive) 
which  blows  no  good  "  ?     So  shifty  and  variable  in  its  par- 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE   GOOD  89 

ticular  applications  is  this  conception  of  the  Good.  But  the 
reasons  for  these  characteristics  are  all  to  be  found  in  the 
statement  just  made  as  to  the  essential  nature  of  all  that  to 
which  the  various  kinds  and  degrees  of  the  conception  are 
applied.  As  varying  and  shifty  as  are  the  conscious  states 
of  the  soul  of  man  as  well  as  the  relations  of  these  states  to 
things  and  to  other  men,  so  many  and  changeful  are  the  uses 
of  the  terms  good  and  bad  when  applied  to  things,  to  events, 
and  to  the  deeds  of  men. 

Now,  however,  another  most  important  consideration 
comes  before  us  respecting  the  essential  characteristics  of 
this  comprehensive  conception.  Plainly,  as  all  human  lan- 
guage shows,  whatever  is  good  admits  of  some  kind  of  rela- 
tive estimate  or  measurement.  We  have  already  spoken  of 
degrees^  as  well  as  of  kinds,  of  what  men  call  good  or  bad. 
And  when  one  remembers  that  characteristic  of  nearly,  if 
not  quite  all  of  the  conscious  states  of  the  Self,  upon  which 
psycho-physics  relies,  whether  popular  or  scientific,  and 
whether  more  or  less  symbolic  and  uncertain  in  its  methods 
and  in  its  conclusions,  then  we  understand  the  source  of  this 
popular  doctrine  of  the  measurement  of  goods.  For  all  such 
conscious  states  do,  in  some  sort,  vary  in  the  degrees  of  their 
intensity  and  comprehensiveness.  As  respects  their  seizure 
upon  the  entire  circuit  of  consciousness,  the  emotional 
warmth  which  goes  with  them,  and  the  depth  of  the  present 
impression  which  they  possess,  they  are  not  the  same.  Our 
language  is,  indeed,  figurative;  its  real  meaning  is  often 
painfully  vague ;  it  may  be  doubted  whether  any  comprehen- 
sive science  of  psycho-physics  can  be  based  upon  such  ex- 
periences. Nevertheless,  the  experiences  are  genuine  and 
universal ;  and  in  them  we  find  the  explanation  for  the  more 
or  less,  both  of  goodness  and  of  badness,  which  things  and 
events  and  deeds  are  held  to  possess. 

It  is  not  in  degrees  alone,  however,  that  the  goodness  and 
badness  of  different  experiences  need  to  be  compared.     An 


40  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

estimate  of  values^  that  is  not  merely  quantitative,  is  un- 
doubtedly placed  by  men  upon  those  experiences  to  which  the 
conception  of  the  Good  is  applied.  This  fact,  and  the  enor- 
mous significance  of  this  fact  for  our  entire  understanding 
of  human  nature,  as  well  as  especially  for  all  attempts  at  a 
philosophy  of  conduct,  will  be  frequently  discussed  in  other 
connections.  Just  now  our  intention  is  much  more  limited 
in  its  range.  The  psychological  principle  which  applies  to 
the  conception  is  this:  All  measurement  of  ''Hhe  good,^^  which 
is  not  merely  intensive  or  extensive  {an  estimate  of  quantity), 
implies  some  standard  which  must  he  assumed  as  differing  in 
hind  from  the  particular  form  of  good  which  is  measured. 
Estimates  of  magnitude  apply  within  one  and  the  same  kind 
of  good.  Estimates  of  value  cannot  be  applied  in  the  same 
way.  If  I  am  asked  to  judge  between  two  conscious  states 
and  tell  which  is  the  most  pleasurable,  I  may  be  able,  at 
least  in  some  rough  and  imperfect  manner,  to  weigh  them 
one  against  another.  1  like  honey,  for  example,  better  than 
sugar.  This  means  that  I  get  more  pleasure  from  the  former 
than  from  the  latter.  1  prefer  reading  a  passage  from  a 
poem  or  a  chapter  from  a  novel  to  eating  either  sweet ;  — 
this  may  mean  the  same  thing.  For,  if  I  am  asked.  Why  ? 
I  may  answer  once  more,  because  I  get  more  pleasure  from 
the  former  than  from  the  latter.  Here  again  the  reference 
is  to  two  pleasurable  states  of  consciousness  which  may  be 
somehow  compared  quantitatively.  But  if,  on  being  asked 
Why?  I  answer,  because  I  think  that  the  happiness  of  read- 
ing a  good  piece  of  literature  is  better,  more  noble,  or 
worthy,  is  higher  and  more  refined,  than  the  pleasures  of 
gratified  taste  for  sweets,  then  I  am  referring  to  another 
standard  than  the  merely  quantitative  one.  Some  other 
kind  of  good  is  regarded  as  mixing  with  the  good  of  pleasure 
which  gives  it  a  peculiar  excellence.  An  estimate  of  goods 
according  to  their  values,  and  not  merely  according  to  their 
intensity  or  extension  is  implied. 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  GOOD  41 

The  explanation  of  all  such  experiences  is  not  difficult  for 
the  candid  student  of  psychology  who  is  willing  neither  to 
deny  nor  to  sophisticate  the  facts.  It  is  a  fundamental  and 
indisputable  fact  that  men  estimate  the  different  conscious 
states  of  the  Self  as  differing  in  value  according  to  a  standard 
which  is  not  merely  quantitative.  In  other  words,  goods 
differ^  as  estimated  in  human  consciousness,  not  only  in  degrees^ 
hut  also  in  excellence  or  worth  That  there  are  kinds  of  goods 
which  have  different  —  higher  and  lower  —  values  is  thus  an 
opinion  common  alike  to  the  multitude  and  to  all  the  reflec- 
tive thinkers  of  mankind.  This  opinion  is  but  the  expression 
of  that  preference  for  certain  states  of  consciousness  over 
other  states,  irrespective  of  their  relations  as  regards  quan- 
tity of  the  same  kind,  which  belongs  to  all  the  artistic  and 
ethical  development  of  man.  It  is  in  the  effort  to  account 
for  this  preference,  to  give  it  validity,  to  defend  it  against 
attacks,  and  to  judge  ourselves  and  others  in  the  light  of 
its  radiance,  that  the  problems  of  ethics  divide  men  into 
different  opinions  and  different  schools.  For  a  science  of 
ethics  begins  only  when  it  is  seen  that  men's  actions  are 
consciously  directed  toward,  or  unconsciously  terminate  in, 
some  one  of  the  several  forms  of  "  the  Good  "  (or  its  oppo- 
site) ;  and  then  the  effort  is  made  to  give  a  rational  unity  to 
all  these  forms,  and  to  regard  the  accepted  rules  of  conduct 
as  the  different  ways  in  which,  as  men  believe,  these  forms 
may  be  obtained. 

Plainly,  however,  other  distinctions  are  necessary  in  order 
to  understand,  even  in  a  preliminary  way,  the  influence  of 
the  conception  of  the  Good  upon  a  science  of  conduct,  or  a 
philosophy  of  morality.  That  classification  which  is  based 
upon  the  distinction  between  good  as  a  means  (instrumental 
good)  and  good  as  an  end  is  now  introduced.  It  is,  how- 
ever, in  fact  of  comparatively  little  assistance  in  determining 
the  essential  nature  of  the  conception.  This  is  often  due  to 
the  implied  theory  that  the  application  of  the  distinction,  at 


42  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

least  in  certain  instances,  can  be  made  absolute.  Especially 
is  such  a  theory  held  by  those  who  take  the  Hedonistic,  even 
when  modified  into  the  so-called  Eudaemonistic  point  of  view. 
These  writers  are  quite  too  ready  to  assume  that  when  we  come 
to  the  good  of  happiness  we  have  reached  a  necessary  limit  to 
our  inquiry :  Good  for  what  ?  For,  surely,  they  say,  happi- 
ness is  good-in-itself ;  although  all  things  and  all  events  were 
treated  as  instrumental  goods,  and  were  summoned  before 
the  conscious  soul  to  tell  what  good  they  contribute  to  it, 
the  happy  condition  of  that  soul  itself  cannot  be  questioned 
in  the  same  way.  The  rational  man  might,  indeed,  be  chal- 
lenged as  to  why  he  does  this  or  that,  and  his  answer  would 
be  accepted  as  rational  if  he  could  declare :  In  order  that  I 
may  be  happy,  or  may  make  some  other  one  happy.  The 
deed  is  good  because  it  is  means  to  happiness;  if  it  is  means 
to  others'  happiness,  it  is  a  good  deed.  But  to  ask.  What 
good  is  there  in  being  happy  ?  —  this  is  to  be  absurd ;  for 
happiness  is  good  as  an  end  in  itself.  Happiness  is  an  in- 
itself-good.  To  prove  that  it  is  so  may,  indeed,  be  impos- 
sible. But  this  is  because  the  matter  is  self-evident  and  so 
admits  of  no  proof,  as  it  needs  none.  Has  not  Bain  declared : 
"Now  there  can  be  no  proof  offered  that  happiness  is  the 
proper  end  of  all  human  pursuits,  the  criterion  of  all  right 
conduct "  ? 

I  am  not  at  present  discussing  either  Hedonism  or  Eudae- 
monism  in  any  of  their  several  forms ;  I  am  not  even  raising 
the  question  whether  happiness  is  the  ""proper^'  end  and 
criterion  of  human  conduct.  I  am  simply  in  search  of  the 
psychological  facts  as  to  men's  conceptions  of  the  differing 
kinds  and  degrees  of  that  which  they  call  good.  Is  it  true, 
in  fact,  that  men  never  regard  happy  conscious  states,  quoad 
happy,  as  means  to  another  form  of  good,  but  always  as 
good  in  themselves,  —  as  being,  of  course,  good  ?  It  is  not 
true  in  fact.  For  many  men  do  frequently  regard  pleasura- 
ble states  of  consciousness  as  instrumental   and   not  final 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  GOOD  48 

goods.  Indeed,  it  might  almost  be  said  that  the  stage  of 
morality,  in  distinction  from  custom  considered  as  mere 
fact,  is  not  reached  until  pleasure-pain  states  of  conscious- 
ness cease  to  be  regarded  solely  as  ends  in  themselves,  and 
come  to  be  regarded  also  as  means  related  to  the  attainment 
of  another  kind  of  good.  This  truth  seems  to  be  especially 
illustrated  by  an  appeal  to  the  two  extremes  of  the  moral 
life,  as  they  are  manifest  in  the  evolution  of  the  race.  Sav- 
age and  uncivilized  peoples  join  with  the  loftiest  specimens 
of  moral  culture  in  all  times,  in  a  relative  depreciation  of, 
if  not  a  positive  scorn  for,  happiness  as  the  only  or  chief 
in-itself-good ;  while,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  the  average 
well-to-do  man  under  favorable  conditions  of  a  somewhat 
advanced  civilization,  the  well-fed  and  successful  English- 
man or  American,  1  who  is  most  likely  to  prize  so  highly  the 
ideas  and  arguments  of  a  skilfully  devised  Eudasmonism. 

It  is  simple  matter  of  fact  of  ethnic  psychology  that,  in 
the  case  of  the  lower  races  the  conduct  and  character  of  men 
is  not  considered  good  or  bad  with  reference  to  the  relation 
which  it  sustains  to  the  production  and  increase,  or  to  the 
decrease  and  destruction  of  the  happiness  whether  of  the 
individual  or  of  the  community.  Sterner  rules  of  behavior 
than  this  view  could  produce  are  necessary  to  existence 
itself.  More  primitive  and  yet  mysterious  and  vague  ideas 
than  those  which  the  "  greatest  happiness  "  theory  can  ac- 
count for  are  already  in  control  of  the  nascent  social  life. 
The  whole  theory  and  practice  of  discipline  as  it  is  found 
actually  operative  amongst  these  races  compels  a  different 
point  of  view.     Here  pleasure-pains,  of  every  kind  and  de- 

1  It  would  be  a  most  interesting  and  suggestive  ethical  inquiry  to  trace  the 
connection  between  physical  well-being,  especially  such  as  is  brought  about  by 
commercial  success  or  successful  empire,  and  the  prevalent  tenets  as  to  the  nature 
of  morally  right  conduct  and  as  to  the  basis  upon  which  repose  the  sanctions  of 
morality.  Well-to-do  merchants,  or  the  official  classes,  or  the  men  who  have 
attained  a  measure  of  academic  prestige,  are  perhaps  naturally  inclined  to  some 
form  of  Hedonism  or  Eudaemonism. 


44  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

gree,  are  largely  treated  as  instrumental;  the  end  is  the 
fitness  of  the  individual  for  his  place  in  the  community, 
in  accordance  with  the  prevalent  idea  of  those  character- 
istics of  Selfhood  in  which  such  fitness  consists.  Thus  the 
Melanesians  and  many  other  tribes  are  wont  to  kill  a  large 
proportion  of  their  infants,  especially  of  the  females,  imme- 
diately after  birth,  because  the  food-supply  is  limited  and 
they  are  "not  fit  for  war."  Yet  some  of  these  tribes  are 
exceedingly  gentle  toward  helpless  living  children.  In  the 
training  of  those  left  alive,  pains  are  freely  taken  by  the 
parents,  and  freely  inflicted  upon  the  children,  to  the  end 
that  they  may  the  better  do  their  duty,  as  such  duty  is  de- 
fined by  the  customs,  laws,  and  circumstances  of  the  tribe. 
The  young  human  cub  is  licked  into  shape  with  only  an 
occasional  sidelong  glance  at  the  Hedonistic  motive.  As  a 
boy  he  is  mercilessly  subjected  to  the  discipline  held  to  be 
necessary  to  conform  him  to  the  existing  crude  ideal  of  man- 
hood. With  this  end  in  view  his  early  years  are  rendered 
full  of  misery.  When  he  reaches  puberty  and  is  ready  to 
be  invested  with  the  rights  of  manhood,  the  ceremonial 
ordinarily  takes  little  account  of  his  happiness,  while  striv- 
ing to  enhance  his  feeling  of  the  worth  of  his  new  possession 
by  emphasizing  the  suffering  with  which  he  pays  the  cost  of 
it.  For  example,  among  some  of  the  Polynesians,  the  candi- 
date must  endure  to  have  his  skin  cut  through  with  sharp 
mussel-shells,  or  his  teeth  dragged  out  by  the  rough  den- 
tistry of  the  priest-doctor. 

In  all  cases  similar  to  the  foregoing,  religious  supersti- 
tions are  apt  to  play  an  important  part ;  but  the  part  which 
they  do  play  is  such  as  to  reinforce  the  conclusion  that  man 
naturally  and  necessarily  seeks  a  variety  of  goods ;  and  that 
in  this  search  he  by  no  means  hesitates  to  regard  the  good 
and  bad  of  happiness  as  subordinate  and  instrumental  to 
other  forms  of  good.  This  view  of  the  relations  of  the 
pleasure-pains  to  the  end  of  existence  is  illustrated  by  the 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  GOOD  46 

doctrine  and  practice  of  "tabu"  among  savage  and  half- 
civilized  tribes.  Here  the  individual  finds  \nmi>e\i  forbidden, 
in  the  interest  of  certain  ends,  and  for  certain  reasons  of 
which  he  has  only  a  vague  and  shifting  conception,  to  realize 
the  various  desires  whose  satisfaction  brings  happiness.  To 
be  sure,  fear  of  some  disaster  which  is  regarded  as  certain 
to  follow  contact  with,  or  enjoyment  of  the  tabued  object 
is  one  of  the  most  powerful  motives  in  enforcing  the  regula- 
tions belonging  to  tabu.  But  he  has  a  shallow  view  of 
human  nature  who  cannot  recognize  more  than  this  as  con- 
cerned in  the  matter.  The  germs  of  a  reverential  awe 
toward  the  mysterious  Unknown  and  of  aspiration  to  stand 
well  in  His  sight,  to  be  thought  worthy  by  Him,  are  also 
patent  here.  And  this  is  an  end  which,  although  closely 
allied  to,  and  often  confused  with,  the  end  of  happiness,  is 
not  precisely  the  same.  The  doctrine  of  Nemesis,  the  way 
in  which  the  gods  furnish  men  with  their  moral  ideals,  the 
mystic  and  ascetic  elements  of  the  religious  cult,  furnish 
arguments  for  the  same  conclusion.  But  these  subjects  be- 
long more  especially  to  the  philosophy  of  religion. 

Of  course,  the  answer  to  the  foregoing  arguments  made  by 
those  who  hold  that  happiness-  is  invariably  and  necessarily 
a  good  in-itself  is  not  difficult  to  anticipate.  It  may  be  said 
that  all  the  pains  voluntarily  endured  or  inflicted  are  re- 
garded as  only  temporarily  and  relatively  instrumental. 
They  are  regarded  as  unavoidable  means  to  the  end  of  a 
greater  measure  or  a  higher  kind  of  happiness  in  the  future. 
Thus,  after  all,  it  is  happiness  which  is  constantly  kept  in 
mind  and,  however  ignorantly,  pursued  as  the  true  and  final 
end  that  is  good  in-itself.  Here,  however,  we  have  one  of 
those  sophistries  of  argument  which  are  based  upon  misin- 
terpretation of  psychological  facts.  The  very  distinction 
which  is  emphasized  by  all  the  ethical  judgments  and  by  all 
the  words  for  conduct  is  entirely  overlooked  by  such  an  argu- 
ment.   The  man  who  makes  his  own  happiness  the  "  in-itself- 


46  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

good,"  and  who  follows  this  end  in  ways  that  run  contrary 
to  the  moral  judgment  of  the  community,  however  crude  and 
loosely  organized,  is  the  had  man.  But  whoever  exhibits 
most  of  those  qualities  which  conform  to  the  moral  judg- 
ment, with  most  of  enduring  and  courageous  sacrifice  of  his 
own  happiness,  he  is  the  good  man. 

As  the  conditions  of  social  welfare  become  more  complex, 
and  the  society  interested  in  it  becomes  enlarged  by  the  con- 
quest, amalgamation,  or  fusion  otherwise  of  different  tribes, 
the  same  general  rule  applies  to  the  conduct  with  reference 
to  one  another  of  its  different  elements.  The  bad  king,  or 
chief,  is  he  who  seeks  the  happiness  of  himself  or  of  his 
family  in  ways  that  run  counter  to  the  established  judgments 
as  to  what  a  good  ruler  ought  to  do.  The  same  thing  is  true 
of  any  of  the  larger  factors  in  the  social  organism.  The 
family,  or  the  clan,  or  the  faction,  which  always  makes 
happiness  the  end-in-itself  of  its  conduct  is  regarded  by  the 
other  families,  clans,  or  factions,  as  had  morally,  whether  it 
be  successful  or  unsuccessful  in  its  endeavor.  And  now  that 
the  principles  of  morals  have  become  expanded  so  as  to 
cover,  at  least  in  some  vague  and  imperfect  way,  the  entire 
human  race,  essentially  the  same  standards  of  ethical  judg- 
ment continue  to  be  applied.  We  are,  indeed,  forced  to 
witness  the  spectacle  of  the  most  civilized  and  Christian 
nations,  arming  themselves  to  their  utmost  capacity  in  order 
to  enforce  their  own  notions,  each  one,  as  to  what  will  render 
them  most  prosperous  and  most  happy.  And  prominent 
diplomats  are  not  wanting  who  openly  avow  that  the  only 
standards  of  moral  excellence  in  the  conduct  of  nations 
toward  each  other,  are  furnished  by  the  intelligent  pursuit, 
by  each,  of  its  own  happiness  as  an  in-itself-good.  No 
wonder  that  race  hatred  seems  just  now  to  be  on  the  in- 
crease. But  when  the  theoretical  moralist  attempts  to 
justify  this  conduct,  as  far  as  it  can  be  shown  to  be  instru- 
mental  to  the    future    greater  happiness   of    the   greatest 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  GOOD  47 

number,  he,  on  the  one  hand,  admits  our  contention  that 
men  habitually  regard  conduct  from  other  points  of  view 
than  its  pleasure-pain  accompaniments  or  consequences,  and 
habitually  practise  as  though  happiness  were  instrumental 
to  certain  ends  that  lie  beyond  itself;  and,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  theorist  has  now  run  his  doctrine  of  happiness,  as 
always  an  in-itself-good,  out  into  so  misty  and  limitless  a 
domain  that,  for  the  average  sight  of  humanity  its  precise 
form  can  no  longer  be  discerned.  At  any  rate,  the  theory 
of  happiness  as  the  alone  good-in-itself  has  now  passed  be- 
yond the  point  where  psychology  or  ethnology  can  test  it. 
Its  further  discussion  must  be  reserved  for  a  more  purely 
speculative  treatment. 

In  that  complex  system  of  means  and  ends  which  human 
thought  and  imagination  frames,  and  to  the  existence  of 
which  human  practice  bears  testimony,  it  seems  difficult  to 
carry  out  any  fixed  and  absolute  distinction.  The  conscious- 
ness and  the  conduct  of  men  show  beyond  doubt  that  they  do 
recognize  the  existence  of  various  degrees  and  kinds  of  what 
they  consider  to  be  good.  And  since  in  this  recognition  of 
kinds  of  good  the  preference  is  not  always  for  the  greater 
quantity  of  the  same  kind,  their  notions  and  their  behavior 
confirm  the  suspicion  that  different  ideal  standards  are 
made  use  of  by  different  men,  and  by  the  same  men  on  differ- 
ent occasions  and  under  different  circumstances.  It  still 
further  appears  that  all  these  different  kinds  of  good  may 
possibly  stand,  at  one  time  or  another,  in  relations  of  instru- 
mental good  to  that  which  is  good-in-itself.  For  man  is  a 
very  complex  being;  his  interests  are  many;  his  apprecia- 
tions are  varied ;  his  sensibilities  are  capable  of  an  acute  and 
refined  development.  The  concrete  problems  of  conduct 
are  increasingly  complicated.  Different  individuals,  and 
different  large  collections  of  individuals,  require  and  actu- 
ally receive  different  forms  of  treatment,  —  whether  to  their 
well-being  or  ill-being,  and  whether  the  well-being  be  con- 


48  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

sidered  as  more  strictly  eudaemonistic,  or  aesthetical,  or 
ethical.  Thus,  by  some  persons,  under  some  circumstances, 
conduct  regarded  as  a  moral  affair  may  be  made  instru- 
mental to  the  end  of  happiness,  or  to  the  realization  of  some 
aesthetical  ideal.  By  others,  under  other  circumstances,  the 
beautiful  object  may  be  constructed  and  used  as  the  instru- 
ment of  happiness  or  of  a  certain  moral  invigoration  and 
improvement.  Still  others,  under  still  different  circum- 
stances, show  themselves  ready  to  sacrifice  all  considerations 
of  morality  and,  as  far  as  possible^  all  considerations  of  hap- 
piness, to  the  realization  of  their  aesthetical  ideal.  Nor  are 
these  differences  found  only  in  application  to  brief  courses 
or  single  pieces  of  conduct.  They  distinguish  different  per- 
sons vrith  reference  to  those  ends  which  they  chiefly  pursue 
in  life,  and  whose  influence  pervades  and  characterizes  all 
that  they  think  and  do  respecting  the  solution  of  life's  most 
important  problems.  Some  men  live  for  pleasure,  and  care 
little  for  the  morally  good  or  the  good  of  beauty  otherwise 
than  as  the  minister  of  pleasure.  Some  men  live  for  art; 
and  some  men  live  for  righteousness'  sake  and  to  make 
themselves  and  others  more  perfect  in  righteousness. 

Is  life  worth  living  ?  This  problem,  in  spite  of  its 
antiquity  and  the  monotony  belonging  to  its  reappearances 
for  discussion,  retains  much  of  its  pristine  fascination. 
Perhaps,  indeed,  it  is  growing  more  engaging  as  it  becomes 
more  complex.  But  what  thinker  cannot  readily  see  that  no 
answer  is  possible  unless  one  has  already  an  answer  to  these 
preliminary  inquiries :  What  is  the  end  of  life  ?  and.  What 
is  the  proper  standard  of  worth,  or  value  ?  Is  the  end  my 
own  happiness;  and  is  the  standard  of  value  quantity  and 
duration  of  happiness?  Then  many,  perhaps  the  majority, 
must  say.  No;  and  there  are  few  that  at  some  time  must  not 
render  this  negative  answer.  Accordingly,  were  it  not  for 
that  mysterious  dread  of  the  hereafter,  which  most  men  feel, 
whether  the  dread  be  rational  or  not,  suicide  would  be  the 


THE   CONCEPTION  OF  THE   GOOD  49 

logical  answer.  Yet  how  many  are  there  whom  we  find 
setting  their  teeth  together,  and  stiffening  their  limbs,  that 
they  may  walk  on  regardless  of  suffering  toward  the  finishing 
of  some  work  of  science,  of  art,  or  of  benevolence  ? 

In  spite  of  the  truth  that  the  distinction  between  instru- 
mental goods  and  the  in-itself-good  is  not  absolute,  I  will 
here  repeat  what  has  already(p.  36  f.)  been  indicated  with 
regard  to  the  classification  of  kinds  of  "  the  Good  "  consid- 
ered as  the  end  of  human  conscious  and  voluntary  action. 
In  this  relative  way  one  may  distinguish  three  kinds  of  that 
which  has  worth  for  its  own  sake,  of  the  goods  to  which  all 
things  and  events  are  regarded  as  means  to  the  end  of  their 
attainment.  These  are  the  more  strictly  eudaemonistic  good, 
or  good  of  happiness,  the  aesthetical  good  or  good  of  beauty, 
and  the  ethical  good  or  good  of  conduct  and  character. 
There  are,  then,  three  forms  of  the  Good,  whether  regarded 
as  means  or  end ;  —  namely,  the  eudaemonistic,  the  aestheti- 
cal, the  ethical. 

Three  remarks  upon  this  classification  will  serve  both  to 
explain  and  to  justify  its  future  uses  in  the  treatment  of  the 
problems  of  ethics.  And,  first,  these  subordinate  categories 
of  the  Good  may  be  regarded  as  sustaining  a  number  of  curi- 
ous and  interesting  relations  to  each  other.  This  truth  has 
already  been  illustrated  by  calling  attention  to  those  instru- 
mental uses  of  pleasure-pain  states  and  conditions  which  are 
so  numerous  and  important  in  the  development  of  the  life  of 
the  race.  Much  of  our  popular  language  is  justified  only  in 
view  of  the  reality  of  these  relations.  "The  whole  ethical 
vocabulary,"  says  Wundt,i  "falls  into  two  great  divisions : 
words  that  denote  ethical  characteristics  like  *good'  and 
*bad,'  and  words  that  indicate  the  emphasis  put  upon  ethical 
characteristics,  like  'esteem  '  and  'contempt.'  "  Almost  the 
same  thing,  however,  might  be  said  of  the  distinctively 
eudaemonistic  or  distinctively  aesthetical  vocabulary.     Hence 

1  Ethics,  I,  p.  41  f. 

4 


50  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

arises  much  crossing  and  confusion  in  the  use  of  similar 
terms  in  every  language.  But  any  more  precise  and  re- 
stricted use  of  the  same  terms  only  serves  to  bring  out  more 
clearly  these  curious  and  interesting  relations  amongst  the 
categories  of  the  Good.  Is  it  not  a  man's  duty  to  seek 
his  own  happiness;  or  at  any  rate  the  happiness  of  his 
friends  and  his  fellowmen  ?  Ought  this  bad  artist  to  paint 
such  bad  pictures;  or  is  it  right  for  the  man  who  might  pro- 
duce so  much  better  art  to  stoop  to  the  inferior  ?  Was  that 
not  a  beautiful  (aesthetically  good)  deed  of  kindness,  —  and 
all  the  more  meritorious  (ethically  good)  because  unde- 
served ?  Was  not  that  form  of  punishment  bad  (aesthetically 
or  ethically),  because  it  caused  needless  or  useless  suffering 
(was,  eudaemonistically  considered,  an  evil)  ?  But  why 
multiply  instances,  when  the  daily  life  of  man  is  so  full  of 
similar  questionings  ? 

But,  second,  all  these  relations  amongst  the  different 
kinds  of  good  —  whether  regarded  as  instrumental  and  final, 
or  regarded  as  appertaining  to  the  eudaemonistic,  the  ges- 
thetical,  or  the  ethical  good  —  are  suggestive  of  some  sort  of 
a  unity  which  shall  bind  them  together  both  in  their  concep- 
tual form  and  in  their  objective  realization.  Thus  far  I 
have  considered  the  facts,  as  such,  of  human  thinking  and 
feeling,  and  of  the  actual  behavior  of  men  as  influenced  by 
their  conceptions  of  the  "goods  "  of  existence.  These  facts, 
however,  have  served  the  student  of  ethics  both  as  his  incite- 
ment and  as  his  guide  to  that  supreme  attempt  at  generaliza- 
tion which  tries  to  embody  itself  in  a  conception  of  "  The 
Good,"  — of  a  good  that  is  entitled  to  be  called  the  Ultimate, 
or  the  Supreme  and  all-inclusive  Good.  It  is,  of  course, 
only  in  an  extremely  crude  and  inchoate  form  if  indeed  at 
all,  that  any  such  conception  belongs  to  the  lower  stages  of 
ethical  development,  whether  of  the  individual  or  of  the 
race.  Primitive  man  has  other  ends  and  interests  too  close- 
fitting  and  imperative  to  encourage  such  a  generalization. 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  GOOD  51 

If  we  really  knew  anything  about  primitive  man  we  might 
perhaps  be  compelled  to  admit  that  he  had  not  enough  of 
thought  and  imagination  even  to  frame  such  a  conception. 
Yet  in  the  "  happy  hunting-ground  "  of  the  North  American 
Indian  there  is  plenty  of  fish  and  game;  the  customary 
morals  of  the  tribe  are  not  rudely  disturbed ;  and  it  is  prob- 
able that  some  truly  artistic  glamour  must  be  spread  over 
the  scene.  In  the  blessed  rule  of  King  Yima  the  ancient 
Parsi  believed  that  men  and  cattle  were  immortal ;  there  was 
no  drought,  no  cold  nor  heat,  no  envy  nor  old  age.  And 
according  to  the  Buddhistic  way  of  thinking,  there  was  long 
ago  an  age  of  glorious  soaring  beings  who  had  no  sin,  no 
sex,  no  want  of  food.  In  the  mind  of  the  more  highly  cul- 
tivated reflective  man  there  rises  the  alluring  image  of  a 
conscious  life  which  shall  combine  in  perfect  harmony  all 
those  states  and  conditions  that  are  in-themselves  good. 
Objectifying  this  image  and  multiplying  it  by  the  various 
members  of  the  community  of  such  lives,  it  becomes  the  con- 
ception of  a  realized  social  ideal.     Of  this  the  poet  sings :  — 

"  Nothing  is  here  for  tears,  nothing  to  wail 
Or  knock  the  breast ;  no  weakness,  no  contempt, 
Dispraise,  or  blame ;  nothing  but  well  and  fair." 

But  if  this  conception  be  rendered  definite  in  terms  only  of 
Eudaemonism,  then  we  shall  have  the  enthusiastic  aesthete 
declaring  against  "that  miserable  word  enjoyment,  which 
falls  infinitely  short  of  the  high  aesthetic  experience  and 
may  be  a  thousand  leagues  aside  from  it,  having  nothing  to 
do  with  it  whatever ; "  while  the  enthusiast  for  a  perfect 
moral  condition  will  affirm  of  Eudsemonism  that  "the  very 
intensity  and  unremittingness  of  its  appeal  to  the  senses  and 
understanding  end  by  fatiguing  and  revolting  us,"  and  by 
breeding  in  us  "a  desire  for  cloud,  storm,  effusion,  and 
relief." 

What  now  is  that  common  element  which  belongs  to  all 


52  PHILOSOPHY   OF  CONDUCT 

those  states  of  conscious  life  which  men  esteem  in-them- 
selves  good?  How  shall  thought  and  imagination  frame  a 
conception  of  that  which  is  the  Good,  ultimate,  supreme, 
and  yet  subjective?  To  express  this  vague  and  comprehen- 
sive conception  we  have  no  one  word  that  is  not  ambiguous 
and  therefore  liable  to  misappropriation  by  way  of  too  exclu- 
sive appropriation  to  some  one  of  the  higher  goods  of  man's 
conscious  life.  Let  us  call  it  the  complete  Satisfaction  of 
the  ideal  Self;  only  in  the  use  of  this  word  "satisfaction" 
we  must  continually  and  strenuously  call  back  the  thought 
to  the  psychological  and  ethnological  facts  pertinent  to  the 
subject.  These  show  that  man,  as  man  and  everywhere, 
has  longings  and  aptitudes  for  different  allied  and  causally 
related  forms  of  conscious  good.  He  has  appreciations  of 
three  cognate  and  yet  not  identical  values.  He  has  sensi- 
bility; he  is  capable  of  happiness  and  of  suffering.  He  is 
an  artist  and  a  lover  of  the  beautiful.  He  is  a  truly  moral 
being;  and  the  different  kinds  of  conduct  and  of  character 
seem  to  him  to  have  a  value  that  is  peculiarly  precious  and 
peculiarly  their  own.  When  any  manifestation  of  that 
which  he  values  as  good  —  the  happy,  the  beautiful,  the 
morally  right  —  is  presented  to  his  conscious  appreciation 
he  is  satisfied.  But  neither  of  these  goods,  apart  from  the 
others,  gives  him  a  full  satisfactioa.^  The  picture  of  a  self- 
conscious  life  in  which  they  should  all  be  raised  to  the  high- 
est potency  and  perfectly  united  is  the  picture  of  the 
complete  subjective  satisfaction,  —  the  ultimate  and  supreme 
Good  for  the  rational  and  sentient  soul. 

To  this  subjective  satisfaction  corresponds  the  objective 
condition,  for  which  we  may  perhaps  most  properly  employ 
the  word  Welfare,  ...   If,  now,  the  thinker,  by  the  highest 


1  The  vparov  i>€vSos  of  every  method  of  Eudaemonisra  —  whether  it  result  in 
the  earlier  and  grosser  forms  of  Hedonism  or  be  the  direct  method  of  Mill's  Util- 
itarianism or  the  indirect  method  of  Sidgwick's  Utilitarianism — is  the  identifi- 
cation of  happiness  with  the  whole  of  the  in-itself-good. 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  GOOD  63 

exercise  of  his  powers  of  reflection  and  imagination,  objec- 
tifies that  which  brings  complete  subjective  good  and  gives  it 
the  form  of  a  community  of  selves,  so  favorably  placed  as 
respects  their  external  circumstances,  and  so  well  and  intelli- 
gently disposed  toward  one  another  that  they  all  realize  their 
highest  satisfactions  (happiness,  beauty,  and  the  morally 
right),  then  he  is  prepared  to  captivate  the  mind  with  a  pic- 
ture of  the  supreme  Social  Good.  Let  it  be  the  "  Republic  " 
of  Plato,  the  ideal  State  of  Aristotle,  the  "Kingdom  of 
Heaven,"  as  opened  to  all  believers.  Here  every  longing 
is  to  be  satisfied, — the  longing  for  perfect  happiness, 
the  longing  for  unblemished  beauty,  the  longing  for 
complete  purity  of  character.  This  is  the  Ideal  that  sat- 
isfies the  different  sides  of  human  nature  as  it  rises  to 
its  highest  heights  of  aspiration  and  endeavor.  But  it  is 
the  Ideal  as  yet  forever  unrealized;  and,  it  would  appear, 
forever  unrealizable  under  the  actual  conditions  of  human 
existence. 

One  more  important  consideration  follows  from  this  pre- 
liminary discussion  of  the  conception  of  "the  Good."  The 
conception  is  itself,  in  every  aspect,  phase,  and  kind,  a 
subject  of  development.  The  actual,  available  means  by 
which  any  form  of  good  is  to  be  realized  are  constantly 
changing.  This  is  true  of  the  means  of  happiness,  as  well  as 
of  the  means  of  assthetical  and  ethical  excellence.  Nor  does 
any  of  the  three  ideals  which  stand  in  human  imagination 
for  the  highest  stage  of  their  respective  kinds  remain  un- 
changed from  age  to  age.  Plato's  ideally  good  man  is  not 
precisely  the  same  as  Aristotle's ;  and  the  ideal  Self  of  the 
later  Greek  or  Roman  Stoic  differs  from  that  of  either  of 
those  masterly  teachers  of  ethics.  The  perfect  Englishman 
does  not  satisfy  fully  either  the  aesthetical  or  the  ethical 
consciousness  of  other  nations ;  nor  is  the  type  of  the  thor- 
oughly good  man  which  they  exalt  by  any  means  wholly  sat- 
isfactory to  him.     Each  feels   it  necessary  to  condescend 


64  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

from  his  own  superior  height  even  to  admire  mildly  some  of 
the  other's  more  cherished  characteristics.  Much  wider  is 
the  difference  between  the  typically  good  man  of  the  Orient 
and  the  man  who  seems  to  merit  that  title  in  the  Western 
World.  From  age  to  age,  whether  we  consider  the  ideally 
good  individual  or  the  supremely  good  social  organization, 
the  grand  and  all-inclusive  moral  Ideal  seems  always  chang- 
ing;—  now  rising  and  now  falling,  now  growing  dim  and 
now  shining  forth  with  a  renewal  of  its  own  white,  self- 
illumining  radiance.  Who  is  the  wholly  satisfactory  good 
man  ?  Where  shall  we  find  and  how  describe  him  ?  And 
how  in  detail  shall  we  construct  that  perfect  welfare  of 
social  conditions  in  which  all  men,  in  all  respects,  cor- 
respond with  this  type?  The  answer  to  these  questions 
is  itself,  to  a  large  extent,  undoubtedly  a  subject  of 
development. 

Yet  one  may  not  hastily  conclude  that  in  ethics  all  is  in  a 
condition  of  perpetual  flux.  For  ethical  development  does 
not  extinguish  or  alter,  but,  rather,  unfolds  the  unchanging 
characteristics  of  human  nature.  As  capable  of  happiness, 
of  aesthetical  aspiration  and  endeavor,  and  of  the  appreciation 
of  conduct  and  the  development  of  character,  the  lowest 
savage  entitled  to  be  called  a  man  is  more  essentially  like 
than  unlike  his  most  exalted  fellow.  There  is  common 
"  stuff  "  in  all  human  conceptions  of  the  Good,  whether  we 
consider  it  as  means  or  end,  and  especially  if  it  be  what  is 
deemed  good  in  conduct  and  in  character.  The  particular 
differences  are  indeed  great;  but,  after  all,  they  are  chiefly 
differences  of  proportion,  arrangement,  and  place  of  empha- 
sis. All  this  will  appear  more  clearly  and  abundantly  in 
subsequent  discussions.  Even,  however,  in  the  preceding 
definition  of  ethics  and  in  the  preliminary  analysis  of  this 
important  ethical  conception  traces  of  relief  from  the  temp- 
tation to  confusion  and  scepticism  have  appeared.  Here  I 
will  only  call  attention  to  the  fact  that,  wherever  either  the 


THE  CONCEPTION  OF  THE  GOOD  55 

goods  of  happiness  or  the  aesthetical  goods  are  regarded  as 
dependent  in  any  manner  or  degree  upon  man's  own  volun- 
tary and  rational  life,  there  men  begin  to  employ  such 
phrases  as  "  ought "  and  "  ought  not "  with  reference  to 
these  goods  also.  But  this  usage  suggests  the  truth  that  the 
sphere  of  ethics  spreads  over  the  eudaemonistic  and  aestheti- 
cal life  of  man  and  tends  to  render  all  the  interests  and  con- 
ditions of  his  life  matters,  largely  or  chiefly,  of  human 
conduct  and  human  character.  That  is  to  say,  every  attempt 
to  subordinate  the  moral  ideal  to  economical,  eudaemonistic, 
or  aesthetical  goods,  only  results  in  introducing  a  new  form 
of  emphasizing  "  the  ought. "  Thus  a  sort  of  supremacy  of 
the  Ethical  Good  over  the  other  forms  of  the  so-called  "  in- 
itself  Good  "  seems  to  be  indicated  in  a  naive  and  unreflect- 
ing but  impressive  way. 

To  these  considerations  might  be  added  such  others  as  are, 
in  Professor  Green's  splendid  argument, ^  made  to  show  how 
the  development  of  ethics  has  itself  enlarged  the  application 
and  elevated  the  content  of  the  ideal  Good.  Conduct,  as  we 
have  seen,  is  the  sphere  of  ethics.  In  so  far,  then,  as  the 
ideals  of  happiness  and  of  art  are  dependent  upon  conduct, 
they  somehow  fall  under  the  sphere  of  ethics.  Still  further, 
if  the  developing  ideal  of  man,  even  or  especially  in  its 
moral  aspect,  rises  so  fast  above  the  horizon  that  the  slow 
climbing  upward  of  his  thought,  imagination,  and  endeavor, 
seems  constantly  to  be  further  and  further,  not  only  from  its 
complete  realization,  but  even  from  the  complete  agreement 
as  to  precisely  what  that  Ideal  is,  this  increasing  distance 
between  the  conception  and  its  realization,  and  this  expand- 
ing of  the  conception,  are  not  necessarily  a  good  ground  for 
scepticism,  or  for  the  refusal  on  any  man's  part  to  aspire 
and  to  strive.  That  is  not  always  best  or  most  influential 
which  is  most  clearly  discerned  and   scientifically  defined. 

1  See  his  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  book  IH,  chapters  ii-iv. 


56  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

And  it  may  be  not  only  the  surest  destiny  but  the  highest 
privilege  of  man  to  have  his  thinking  baffled  and  his  imag- 
ination outstripped  whenever  he  attempts  to  give  the  full 
account  of  what  it  means  to  him  to  use  such  a  phrase  as  this 
—  the  Highest  Good,  or  that  which  is  perfectly  and  inclu- 
sively good. 


PART  FIRST 
THE  MORAL  SELF 


"  So  in  man's  self  arise 
August  anticipations,  symbols,  types 
Of  a  dim  splendor  ever  on  before 
In  that  eternal  circle  life  pursues." 

Browning. 


CHAPTER  TV 

ANALYSIS  OF  MORAL  CONSCIOUSNESS 

The  more  detailed  study  of  the  moral  self,  or  of  man  as 
capable  of  and  responsible  for  conduct,  may  fitly  begin  with  a 
survey  of  human  nature  from  the  point  of  view  held  by  psy- 
chological ethics.  What  that  point  of  view  is  has  already  (p. 
21  f.)  been  sufficiently  indicated.  In  other  words,  the  first 
problem  of  ethics  may  be  expressed  as  follows :  What  equip- 
ment for  the  moral  life  belongs  to  the  subject  of  that  life  ? 
In  considering  this  problem  it  is  not  necessary  to  appeal  to 
facts  in  order  to  sustain  the  conviction  that,  in  all  essential 
respects,  man  has  always  had  the  same  kind  of  a  moral  equip- 
ment. By  the  student  of  ethics,  this  equipment  must  there- 
fore be  considered  as  an  endowment.  Indeed  if  one  were  to 
press  the  ethnological  or  anthropological  discussion  to  its  last 
ground  of  standing,  one  might  feel  fully  justified  in  saying: 
If  at  any  time  there  existed  a  being  half  or  three-quarters 
ape  and  half  or  one-quarter  man,  who  differed  essentially  in 
this  respect  from  man  as  we  now  know  him,  such  being 
would  not  properly  be  called  a  "man."  Man,  as  we  now 
know  him,  is  essentially  ethical.  His  ethical  development  is 
not  one  with  which  he  can  dispense  and  yet  continue  the 
claim  to  be  what,  psychologically  and  ethnologically  consid- 
ered, is  properly  called  human. 

Moreover,  in  the  broadest  extent  of  the  inquiry  all  the  so- 
called  faculties  and  distinctive  characteristics  of  human 
nature  are  involved  and  employed  in  the  life  of  conduct  and 
in  the  development  of  character.      Yet  a  very  important  dis- 


60  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

tinction  should  be  made  at  this  point.  Some  of  these  func- 
tions and  activities  are  not  distinctively  ethical,  as  others 
certainly  are.  Man,  as  cognitive  merely,  as  acting  in  the 
interests  solely  of  the  growth  of  knowledge  and  the  attain- 
ment of  s^cience,  —  if  we  may  for  the  present  purpose  and  by  a 
somewhat  difficult  measure  of  abstraction  conceive  of  him  as 
merely  cognitive,  —  uses  precisely  the  same  powers  in  the 
same  way  as  when  he  is  acting  in  the  interests  of  the  moral 
life.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  certain  forms  of  mental 
functioning  which  the  student  of  ethics  is  not  at  liberty  to 
consider  in  precisely  the  same  manner.  A  distinction  may 
then  be  drawn  between  such  part  of  man's  endowment  for 
the  life  of  conduct  as  is  more  general  and  involves  all  his 
so-called  faculties,  and  such  other  part  as  may  be  more  speci- 
fic and  distinguished  by  uniquely  ethical  activities.  Perhaps, 
indeed,  the  picture  of  a  being  v^ith  a  superb  intellectual 
outfit  and  an  exquisitely  cultivated  aesthetical  judgment  and 
sensibility,  but  quite  without  "  conscience  "  in  the  popular 
meaning  of  this  word,  is  not  impossible  to  construct. 
Actual  examples  of  men  long  dead  or  now  living  may  be 
pointed  out,  who  have  not  failed  to  suggest  the  abstract 
possibility  of  such  a  being.  This  possibility  suggests  a  clas- 
sification the  fuller  justification  of  which  will  follow  in  con- 
nection with  all  the  subsequent  discussion  of  allied  topics. 

The  ordinary  division  of  the  psychical  activities  or  func- 
tions may  conveniently  be  adopted.  Ethics,  studied  psycho- 
logically, will  then  have  to  consider  the  possibility,  and  the 
actual  nature  of  (1)  ethical  feelings,  (2)  ethical  cognition, 
and  (3)  ethical  volition  or  choice  as  a  moral  affair.  In  the 
consideration  of  each  class  of  the  subjects  suggested  by  this 
tripartite  division,  it  will  be  found  that  the  previous  two- 
fold distinction  must  also  be  borne  in  mind.  For  certain 
forms  of  feeling,  of  judgment,  and  of  willing,  will  be  found 
to  be  ethical,  in  a  more  specific  and  unique  way.  The  psy- 
chological (whether,  or  not,  it  be  also  rational)  primacy  — 


ANALYSIS   OF  MORAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  61 

the  first  position  in  the  order  of  actual  development  —  must 
be  given  to  the  feelings,  where  our  problem  is  that  of  tracing 
the  sources  and  the  unfolding  of  the  moral  life  of  man, 
whether  of  the  individual  or  of  the  race. 

The  affective  (or  affectional)  equipment  of  man  for  the 
moral  life  consists  in  two  classes  of  feelings.  The  first  of 
these  includes  such  affections,  emotions,  passions,  or  other 
forms  of  feeling  (and  here  for  the  moment  we  may  mention 
certain  impulses  and  appetites)  as  do  not  of  themselves  have 
any  special  ethical  significance,  but  by  their  intensity  or 
extensity,  adjustment,  and  predominance  or  control,  influ- 
ence conduct  and  determine  character.  Much  of  this  affective 
equipment  man  shares  with  the  lower  animals,  —  as,  for 
example,  anger,  fear,  shame,  pride,  jealousy,  sympathy,  etc. 
Their  sum-total,  so  to  speak,  constitutes  the  greater  part  of 
what  is  popularly  called  each  man's  "disposition."  In  the 
same  category,  with  reference  to  the  purposes  of  a  philosophy 
of  conduct,  may  perhaps  best  be  placed  such  impulses  as 
curiosity,  acquisitiveness,  the  so-called  instinct  of  self- 
preservation,  etc.  It  is  these  affective  and  impulsive  quali- 
ties of  human  nature  which  it  is  particularly  difficult  for 
psychology  to  classify  or  even  to  discriminate  and  enumerate 
with  any  degree  of  scientific  completeness.  It  is  they  which, 
when  they  are  considered  as  habits  or  trained  faculties  under 
the  principle  of  moderation  ("the  mean  "),  Aristotle^  denom- 
inated the  "moral  excellences  "  or  virtues.  Under  what  cir- 
cumstances these  affective  and  impulsive  forms  of  functioning 
take  to  themselves  a  more  distinctively  ethical  quality,  and 
become  entitled  to  such  terms  as  "good"  or  "bad,"  in  the 
distinctively  ethical  meaning  of  the  words,  the  discussion  of 
such  problems  as  the  nature  of  virtue  and  vice,  the  classifi- 
cation of  the  virtues  and  the  unity  of  virtue  must  be  per- 
mitted to  show. 

But  besides  such  portion  of  man's  moral  endowment  of 
1  Nic.  Eth.,  II,vf. 


62  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

feeling  as  is  constituted  by  his  natural  impulses,  emotions, 
and  passions,  in  the  relation  which  all  these  necessarily  come 
to  sustain  toward  the  life  of  conduct  and  the  development  of 
character,  there  are  certain  unique  forms  of  distinctively 
ethical  feeling.  Of  these  the  most  primary  and  distinctive 
—  indeed,  the  distinctive  and  unique  affective  element  in 
moral  consciousness  —  is  a  certain  feeling  which  I  will  ven- 
ture to  call  "the  feeling  of  the  ought"  (or  its  opposite,  "the 
ought-not ").  In  its  more  developed  form  this  affective 
movement  becomes  the  feeling  of  moral  obligation.  Closely 
allied  to,  and  yet  by  no  means  the  same  with,  this  feeling  is 
the  feeling  of  ethical  approbation  (and  its  opposite).  Of 
these  two,  when  they  are  compared,  it  is  noticeable  that  the 
former  stands  much  nearer  to  the  ultimate  and  unanalyzable 
sources  of  the  moral  life  of  man.  For  ethics,  or  the  science 
of  conduct,  has  already  been  distinguished  as  having  to  treat 
of  that  which  ought  and  ought-not  to  be  done  in  conduct,  and 
with  that  which  ought  and  ought-not  to  be  in  character.  The 
morally  good  is  equivalent  to  that  which  "ought,"  and  the 
morally  bad  is  that  which,  on  the  contrary,  answers  to  the 
title  "ought-not."  Unless  man  were  endowed  with,  or 
capable  of  developing  the  feeling  of  obligation,  —  that  pecu- 
liar and  unique  attitude  toward  certain  kinds  of  conduct,  —  he 
could  not  possibly  lead  the  moral  life.  To  himself,  and  so 
far  as  his  own  self-consciousness  is  concerned,  he  could 
neither  be  good  nor  bad  morally.  But  the  feeling  of  appro- 
bation (or  its  opposite)  is  frequently,  if  not  generally,  almost 
as  much  a  hedonistic  or  sesthetical  as  a  strictly  ethical  affair. 
That  is  to  say,  the  feeling  of  pleasant  satisfaction  which  is 
experienced  on  contemplating  a  morally  good  deed  or  an 
upright  character  is  ordinarily  a  mixture  of  sympathetic 
happiness,  sesthetical  admiration,  and  gratified  moral  con- 
sciousness. In  case  there  is  something  naturally  painful  or 
sesthetically  ugly  about  the  deed  which,  however,  as  viewed 
from   the   moral  point  of  view,  one   is  still   compelled  to 


ANALYSIS  OF  MORAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  63 

approve,  a  partial  or  complete  separation  of  the  elements 
composing  this  mixture  is  effected.  Even  then,  however,  if 
the  person  performing  the  deed  is  regarded  as  triumphing 
over  his  own  feelings  of  pain  and  of  sesthetical  repulsion  in 
the  interests  of  a  high  moral  ideal,  the  more  strictly  hedon- 
istic and  aesthetical  elements  of  one's  approbation  return 
with  redoubled  force.  The  father  suffering  keenly  while  he 
punishes  his  well-beloved  son,  or  the  righteous  judge  with 
sympathetic  emotion  condemning  his  dear  friend,  are  the 
subjects  of  a  hedonistic  and  assthetical,  as  well  as  of  a  more 
strictly  ethical  approbation. 

The  feeling  of  merit  (or  its  opposite,  the  feeling  of  demerit) 
should  perhaps  be  added  to  the  other  two  as  belonging  to  the 
more  distinctly  ethical  endowment  of  man  on  the  side  of 
affection  or  sentiment.  But  here  the  psychologist  seems  to 
be  dealing  with  states  of  consciousness  yet  more  complex. 
The  workman  in  any  line  of  art  may  well  enough  feel  that  he 
deserves  recognition  for  the  good  work  that  he  has  done, 
whether  or  not  he  has  wrought  with  a  moral  motive  or  in 
accordance  with  rules  laid  down  by  the  current  conceptions 
of  virtue  and  of  vice.  The  joy  of  work  finished,  or  of  inven- 
tion and  discovery,  especially  when  difficulties  have  been 
overcome,  is  not  altogether  alien  from  the  ethical  feeling  of 
merit.  Thus  we  read  of  Gay-Lussac  dancing  about  his  labor- 
atory when  a  piece  of  chemical  research  was  successfully 
accomplished ;  and  Niebuhr  tells  of  a  feeling  which  must  be 
akin  to  the  Divine  joy  in  creation,  over  his  own  well  com- 
pleted task.  Still,  of  the  feelings  of  merit  and  demerit,  as 
well  as  of  the  feelings  of  approbation  and  disapprobation, 
when  they  attach  themselves  to  the  kind  of  conduct  as 
viewed  from  the  moral  standpoint,  it  seems  true :  there  is  to 
be  recognized  in  all  these  affectional  movements  of  human 
consciousness  a  specific  fitness  for  the  moral  life. 

Ethical  cognition,  or  the  knowledge,  half-knowledge,  and 
opinion,    which    characterizes    man's   entire   moral    devel- 


64  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

opment,  is  also  a  complex  affair.  Indeed,  the  completed 
moral  judgment  has  its  roots  in  all  the  cognitive  processes 
and  faculties.  All  human  intellection  is  concerned  in,  and 
determinative  of,  the  life  of  conduct  and  the  development  of 
character.  But  such  cognition  culminates,  as  do  all  the 
processes  which  lead  up  to  and  are  involved  in  a  completed 
act  of  knowledge,  in  a  certain  form  of  judgment.  It  is  the 
character  of  this  judgment  which  furnishes  the  only  distinc- 
tive characteristic  of  the  moral  life  in  respect  of  its  intellec- 
tual or  cognitive  aspect. 

The  fuller  exposition  of  the  part  which  intellection  plays 
in  man's  moral  life  belongs  to  the  doctrine  of  ethical  judg- 
ment and  to  the  discussion  of  the  virtues  and  of  the  vari- 
ous theories  as  to  the  nature  of  the  right.  But  the  barest 
preliminary  analysis  of  human  moral  consciousness  must 
detect  the  following  important  facts.  Any  judgment  upon 
questions  of  the  right  or  wrong  in  conduct  implies  a  certain 
cultivation  of  those  intellectual  activities  which  result  in  the 
forming  of  ideals.  Any  considerable  development  of  moral 
character  implies  a  relatively  high  degree  of  such  culture. 
It  is  man  as  capable  of  idealization  who  is  also  capable  of 
conduct  in  the  profoundest  and  truest  meaning  of  this 
word.  But  the  formation  of  ideals  —  the  more  emphati- 
cally, the  higher  and  nobler  the  ideals  are  —  requires  the 
reflective  and  productive  activity  of  thought,  and  the  repro- 
ductive and  spontaneous  activity  of  imagination.  A  growth 
of  that  knowledge  which  is  gained  by  experience  as  to  the 
appropriate  and  ordinarily  successful  means  for  realizing 
(however  imperfectly)  his  ideals,  and  growing  capacity  to 
predict  the  consequences  of  conduct,  are  also  an  indispensable 
portion  of  the  intellectual  equipment  of  man  for  the  moral 
life.  All  this,  however,  implies  an  elaborate  development  of 
time-consciousness,  and  the  formation  of  a  more  or  less  dis- 
tinct and  elaborate  consciousness  of  self.  It  also  implies  the 
unfolding  of  the  faculty  of  recognitive  memory,  and  of  reas- 


ANALYSIS  OF  MORAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  (55 

oning  from  cause  to  effect,  and  from  effect  to  cause.  With- 
out this  forward-and-backward  running  of  reason  man  could 
not  impute  the  consequences  of  good  and  bad  conduct  to  the 
personalities  whose  conduct  has  entered  into  the  chain  of 
causal  influences.  We  have  thus  far  been  considering  those 
processes  terminating  in  ethical  cognition  which,  although 
an  indispensable  part  of  man's  moral  equipment,  are  not 
themselves  distinctively  ethical. 

A  distinctively  and  uniquely  ethical  conception  appears, 
however,  to  be  somehow  involved  in  every  act  of  judgment 
whose  subject  is  either  a  piece  of  conduct  judged  as  such, 
or  some  type  or  exhibition  of  character.  This  conception 
forms  the  predicate  of  every  genuinely  ethical  judgment. 
For  in  every  such  judgment  the  conception  "  rightness  "  or 
"  wrongness  "  (in  the  peculiar  meaning  of  these  words  which 
ethics  is  forced  to  recognize)  belongs  to  the  predicate.  Ethi- 
cal judgment  ^s  an  adjudging  of  the  "right,"  or  the  "wrong," 
to  conduct  and  to  character.  Such  are  the  words  which  carry 
in  them  the  subtile  essence  that  is  distinctive  of  the  result  in 
which  all  the  powers  and  processes  of  human  intelligence 
express  themselves,  when  they  combine  to  form  an  ethical 
pronouncement.  What  is  it  that  human  intelligence  can  do, 
with  all  its  wonderful  development  in  comparison  with  the 
lower  animals,  of  the  distinctively  and  uniquely  moral  sort  ? 
It  can  form  and  apply  the  category  of  the  Right  to  conduct 
and  to  character.  In  all  his  ethical  judgments  —  and  all  his 
intellectual  equipment  for  the  moral  life  culminates  in  acts 
of  judgment  —  man  can  use  the  predicate  of  rightness  (or  its 
opposite)  to  characterize  to  himself  and  to  others  the  peculiar 
marks  whose  significance  the  science  of  ethics  investigates. 
Judging  what  is  right  and  what  is  wrong,  man  is  uniquely  a 
moral  intelligence. 

That  some  special  development  of  the  faculty  of  volition  is 
necessary  to  conduct  and  to  the  development  of  character  is 
admitted  with  a  practical  unanimity  both  by  the  unthinking 


66  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

multitude  and  by  the  writers  of  the  various  schools  of  ethics. 
From  Aristotle  to  Leslie  Stephen,  from  first  to  last  even 
among  the  more  clearly  pronounced  of  the  Determinists,  this 
admission  is  the  prevalent  opinion.  In  order  to  actions 
which  deserve  the  name  of  moral  virtues,  Aristotle  ^  holds 
that  the  doer  must  choose  to  do  them ;  that  only  the  volun- 
tary is  the  praiseworthy  he  thinks  to  be  the  self-evident 
opinion  of  all  men.  "  Voluntary  action,  or  action  deter- 
mined by  the  motives  of  the  agent,"  says  Leslie  Stephen,^  " is 
the  definition  of  what  is  strictly  conduct."  We  shall  see 
later  on  that  this  alleged  universal  testimony  is  by  no  means 
so  clear  as  is  customarily  supposed;  and  especially,  that 
the  attribution  of  conduct  to  the  Self,  as  somehow  its  own 
(no  matter  how  vague,  inchoate,  and  inaccurate  the  concep- 
tion may  be  of  what  constitutes  a  Self),  is  far  more  universal, 
primary,  and  self-evident  than  is  the  testimony  to  the  volun- 
tary nature  of  all  conduct.  However,  that  man,  on  the  side 
of  his  volitions,  is  capable  of  a  development  which  puts  him 
into  control  of  himself  in  a  manner  quite  superior  to  the 
control  exercised  over  their  actions  by  any  of  the  lower  ani- 
mals is  a  universal  assumption  of  all  human  social  relations ; 
it  is  at  once  a  presupposition  and  a  conclusion  of  all  psycho- 
logical and  ethnological  investigation. 

The  proposition  that  man  is  possessed  of  a  truly  moral 
freedom  is  not  to  be  defended  merely  by  taking  the  popular 
voice  or  by  accepting  ready-made,  as  it  were,  the  conclusions 
of  the  libertarian  philosopher.  The  popular  voice  does  not 
sound  from  depths  that  have  no  need  of  exploration ;  the  con- 
clusions of  philosophy  are  quite  too  often  imported  from 
fields  of  systematic  metaphysics  that  bear  little  resemblance 
to  the  actual,  living,  moral  consciousness  of  man.  Only  as 
our  reflection  arises  fresh  from  the  skilful  interpretation  of 
all  the  facts  of  this  consciousness  and  keeps  itself  tolerably 

1  Nich.  Eth.,  II,  iii,  and  III,  i  f . ;  and  passim. 

2  The  Science  of  Ethics,  p.  239. 


ANALYSIS  OF  MORAL  CONSCIOUSNESS  67 

clear  of  entanglements  with  the  assumptions  of  physical 
science  and  with  the  uncertain  calculations  of  economics, 
politics,  and  sociology,  can  it  lead  to  that  doctrine  of  moral 
freedom  which  most  fully  satisfies  the  demands  of  the  pro- 
foundest  ethical  principles  and  the  loftiest  ethical  ideals. 
Meantime,  the  fact  of  analysis  remains  certain  that  a  rela- 
tively high  degree  of  volitional  faculty  constitutes  an  in- 
dispensable part  of  man's  equipment  for  the  moral  life. 
Whether  man,  considered  as  a  Moral  Self,  has  actually 
achieved  a  distinctly  new  kind  of  freedom  cannot  be  deter- 
mined by  a  preliminary  analysis. 

Two  supplementary  observations  may  fitly  finish  the  task 
of  this  chapter.  It  is  customary  to  say  ^  that  the  feelings, 
the  emotions  and  sentiments  —  as,  for  example,  anger,  fear, 
or  even  benevolence  —  are  not  "  in  themselves  ''  moral,  are 
indifferent,  and  neither  good  nor  bad.  But  this  saying  is 
also  true  of  the  cognitive  and  volitional  factors  of  conduct ; 
"  in  themselves  "  they  have  no  moral  value  or  significance, 
because  in  themselves  they  have  no  existence  whatever.  I 
cannot  too  much  insist  that  the  qualifications  of  moral  good- 
ness or  badness,  like  all  the  other  qualifications  of  human 
nature,  attach  themselves  to  the  entire  psychical,  complex 
activity  or  attitude,  — thought,  feeling,  will;  or  rather  they 
are  the  Self  as  in  this  attitude,  as  thus  conducting  itself. 
Without  ideas  of  value,  and  feeling  appreciative  of  differing 
values,  and  without  experience  as  to  the  consequences  of  con- 
duct and  as  to  the  means  of  realizing  the  ends  of  conduct, 
man's  willing  and  choosing  would  have  no  moral  signifi- 
cance. The  same  moral  worthlessness  attaches  to  the  hav- 
ing of  ideas  that  stir  no  moral  feeling,  are  not  capable  of 
issuing  in  conduct,  and  cannot  possibly  be  regarded  as  either 
accepted  and  embraced  or  rejected  and  banished,  by  a  deed 
of  will. 

And,  further,  in  the  moral   evolution  of  the    individual 

1  So,  for  example,  Dewey  (quoting  Bentham),  Outlines  of  Ethics,  p.  6. 


68  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

and  of  the  race  the  entire  Self  must  move  forward  as  a  unity, 
and  in  a  manner  accordant  with  that  close  interdependence  of 
all  the  so-called  faculties  which  the  very  nature  of  its  uni- 
tary being  both  requires  and  secures.  As  the  customary 
figures  of  speech  permit  us  to  say :  A  darkened  mind  or  a 
callous  heart  does  not  favor  a  good  will ;  nor  can  the  good 
will  remain  good  which  does  not  aim  at  and  secure  mental 
illumination,  the  refining  and  elevating  of  the  ideals,  the 
increase  of  wisdom,  the  quickening  and  the  harmonizing  of 
the  higher  and  nobler  forms  of  sentiment. 


CHAPTER  Y 

THE  FEELING  OF  OBLIGATION 

Into  every  genuinely  human  consciousness,  into  every  sub- 
ject of  the  truly  human  life  there  enters  at  some  time  a  form 
of  emotional  disturbance  which  is  chronologically  primary 
and  essential  to  the  very  idea  of  ethics,  as  well  as  the  unique 
possession  of  man.  It  is  only  when  this  feeling  becomes  at- 
tached to  the  idea  of  a  certain  action,  that  the  action  becomes 
conduct  and  the  truly  moral  life  begins.  This  statement  must 
be  received  as  applying  in  the  strictest  way  to  the  devel- 
opment of  moral  consciousness  in  the  individual ;  but  it  may 
be  taken  on  grounds  which,  although  largely  speculative,  are 
quite  tenable,  to  apply  also  to  the  development  of  morality 
in  the  race.  It  follows  from  the  very  nature  of  this  feeling, 
as  well  as  from  the  circumstances  of  its  first  origin  in  human 
consciousness,  that  all  analysis  ends  with  its  recognition; 
neither  the  memory  of  the  individual,  nor  any  sort  of  records 
kept  by  mankind,  can  recall  and  represent  the  occasions  or 
the  conditions  of  its  origin  in  the  race.  As  in  similar  cases, 
however,  it  is  possible  in  this  case  to  place  on  a  firm  basis 
of  observed  facts  our  views  as  to  what  takes  place  in  the  de- 
velopment of  the  individual,  and  to  make  out  an  acceptable 
argument  as  to  what  must  have  taken  place  in  the  history  of 
the  race. 

By  their  language  and  their  customs,  considered  both  in 
the  keeping  and  in  the  revolt  against  them,  and  by  all  their 
judgments,  whether  more  or  less  reflective,  men  quite  uni- 
versally show  the  feeling  of  obligation.     It  is  only  by  the 


70  PHILOSOPHY  OP   CONDUCT 

infusion  of  this  feeling  into  those  excellences  of  conduct  and 
of  character  which  are  called  the  virtues,  that  these  excel- 
lences become  regarded  as  duties  and  accepted  as  affording 
some  sort  of  a  mandate  to  the  will.  "  I  ought "  (or  "  I  ought 
not "),  "  he  ought "  (or  its  opposite),  this  deed  or  class  of 
actions  "ought  to  be  done,"  but  the  other  deed  or  class  of 
actions  "ought  not  to  be  done  "  —  such  expressions  of  judg- 
ment as  these  are  the  commonplaces  of  the  talk  of  mankind 
in  all  times  and  communities,  and  under  every  variety  of 
intellectual  and  social  development.  But  the  universal  pres- 
ence and  the  perpetual  recurrence  of  those  feelings  and  judg- 
ments to  which  such  expressions  bear  indisputable  testimony, 
are  not  more  impressive  than  is  the  marvellous  variety  of 
opinions  and  practices  which  emerge  to  answer  the  question: 
What,  then,  do  men  generally  feel  and  judge  that  they 
ought  to  do  ?  In  illustration  of  this  variety  it  is  only  neces- 
sary in  the  present  connection  to  refer  to  such  shocking 
extremes  as  are  exhibited  by  those  who,  like  certain  Kam- 
chatkans  and  Mongolians  tolerate  or  approve  of  murder, 
adultery,  and  theft,  but  verily  think  that  he  who  scrapes 
snow  from  his  shoes  with  a  knife,  or  lays  iron  in  the  fire,  or 
strikes  his  horse  with  the  rein,  ought  to  be  punished  with 
death.  It  is  plainly  necessary,  then,  for  the  student  who 
approaches  the  problems  of  ethics  from  the  psychological  and 
ethnological  point  of  view  to  admit  a  very  important  distinc- 
tion at  this  place  in  his  survey  of  the  field  of  ethics.  "  The 
feeling  of  the  ought  ^^  is  primary^  essential^  unique;  the  judg- 
ments as  to  what  one  ought  are  the  result  of  environment^  edu- 
cation^ and  reflection. 

I  have  just  said  that  the  feeling  of  obligation  in  its  most 
original  form  defies  further  analysis.  By  this  statement  it 
is  not  meant  that  this  feeling  does  not  ordinarily,  or  even 
universally,  arise  blended  or  mixed  with  other  forms  of  feel- 
ing and  associated  with  a  certain  content  of  perception  or 
of  ideas.     All  states  of  consciousness  in  which  the  affective 


THE  FEELING  OF  OBLIGATION  71 

aspect  is  most  emphasized  are  a  blend,  or  a  confusion,  of 
various  elements  which  psychological  analysis  may  be  able  to 
detect,  but  which  are  rarely  or  never  found  existing  separate 
in  the  actual  life  of  the  soul.  Simple  feelings,  like  simple 
sensations,  are  only  theoretical  factors  of  the  conscious 
states.  Nature's  chemistry  is  synthetic  here ;  and  the  con- 
centration of  the  mind's  point  of  self-regard  upon  any  one 
aspect  of  the  psychical  complex  only  serves  to  recognize  its 
existence  within  the  complex,  but  not  to  impart  to  it  exist- 
ence apart  from  the  complex ;  or  even  to  justify  the  opinion 
that  simple  psychoses  can  have  any  such  separate  existence. 
Thus  with  the  "feeling  of  the  ought."  This  feeling  may  be 
—  although  as  to  this  it  is  difficult  and  perhaps  impossible 
to  say  with  perfect  confidence  —  always  connected  with  feel- 
ings of  the  pleasure-pain  sort.  Or,  if  the  expression  be  pre- 
ferred, it  may  be  claimed  that  the  feeling  of  obligation,  like 
all  other  feelings,  always  has  some  tone  of  either  pleasure  or 
pain.  That  men  do  recognize  duties  which  are  pleasant  and 
other  duties  which  are  painful,  as  well  as  both  pleasant  and 
painful  vices,  is  an  indubitable  fact.  And  no  amount  of 
theoretical  manipulation  or  practical  quibbling  can  destroy 
the  significance  of  this  fact.  It  may  also  be  true  that  the 
feeling  of  obligation,  especially  and  of  necessity  in  all  its 
historical  development,  always  has  some  content  of  thought 
to  which  it  is  attached.  About  this,  however,  some  doubt 
may  properly  be  expressed  when  we  have  regard  to  the  many 
hidden  and  mysterious  ways  in  which  the  feeling  arises. 
But,  whatever  position  may  be  taken  upon  these  and  all 
similar  questions  of  psychological  analysis,  it  still  remains 
true,  to  admit  the  fact  that  habitually,  or  even  universally 
and  necessarily,  conscious  pleasure  or  pain,  and  a  content 
of  idea,  blends  with  and  modifies  and  defines  the  feeling  of 
obligation,  is  not  the  same  thing  as  to  hold  that  this  feeling 
can  be  resolved  into,  or  classified  with  the  pleasure-pains. 
When  adult  men  say,  "I  ought,"  or  other  words  equivalent 


72  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

to  these,  they  are  customarily  expressing  a  complex  attitude 
of  mind  toward  a  particular  piece  of  conduct.  Like  every 
other  attitude  of  mind  that  which  is  thus  expressed  involves 
feeling,  thought,  and  will.  And,  indeed,  one  may  empha- 
size either  of  these  three  aspects  of  the  total  situation  by 
modifying  one's  expression.  Thus  one  may  emphasize  the 
emotional  factor  by  declaring:  "  I  feel  (more  or  less  intensely' 
and  unswervingly)  that  I  ought,"  or  may  lay  stress  upon  the 
intellectual  factor,  the  presence  of  judgment,  by  saying; 
"I  think  (more  or  less  clearly,  and  with  consciousness  of 
reasons  or  grounds)  that  I  ought;"  or  even;  "I  must  indeed, 
and  I  shall,  because  I  ought "  —  in  this  way  bringing  into 
evidence  the  volitional  impulse  or  rational  mandate  given  to 
the  will.  Separating  in  thought,  what  cannot  be  found 
wholly  apart  in  the  actual  life  of  the  Self,  the  conclusion  is 
justified  that  this  feeling  of  the  ought  is  not  to  be  identified 
with  any  other  content  of  human  consciousness. 

But  although  we  cannot,  strictly  speaking,  explain  the 
feeling  of  obligation  by  resolving  it  into  any  other  form  of 
feeling,  we  may  observe  and  describe  the  occasions  on  which 
it  probably  arises  in  the  life  of  the  individual  man.  And 
here  the  patent  and  the  most  important  fact  is  this;  no 
moral  life  originates  with  the  individual  as  an  experience 
isolated  from  his  social  environment.  From  the  first  the 
human  offspring  is  a  member  of  the  family,  of  the  tribe,  of 
the  larger  or  smaller  social  community,  and  perhaps  of  the 
state  or  nation.  It  is  idle  in  this  connection  to  conjecture 
whether  the  human  child,  if  born  and  reared  without  any 
environment  or  education  which  in  any  way  embodied  and 
enforced  some  system  of  concrete  judgments  as  to  the  right 
and  wrong  of  conduct,  could  experience  —  not  to  say  develop 
—  the  feeling  of  obligation.  The  very  conditions  of  the  con- 
tinuance and  the  nurture  of  the  physical  life  of  the  infant 
render  it  impossible  to  obtain  any  trustworthy  evidence  in 
support  of  such  a  conjecture.     We  have  no  satisfactory  evi- 


THE  FEELING  OF  OBLIGATION  78 

dence  to  determine  whether  the  "  wolf -children  "  of  India, 
or  the  wild  men  of  the  woods,  show  any  traces  of  a  feeling 
of  obligation,  the  occasion  of  whose  origin  is  not  connected 
with  some  quasi-social  environment. 

This  ought-consciousness,  even  in  its  most  primitive  form, 
may  be  said  to  have  both  its  positive  and  its  negative  poles; 
it  is,  by  nature  and  essentially,  a  binding  to  and  a  binding 
not-to,  —  a  feeling  which  goes  with  the  judgment,  I  ought 
to  do  this  or  1  ought  not  to  do  that.  It  is  probable,  however, 
that  as  a  rule  this  emotional  disturbance  first  arises  in  con- 
sciousness in  some  concrete  but  negative  form :  It  begins  as 
a  feeling  of  repulsion  when  some  natural  impulse  receives 
its  check  by  coming  into  collision  with  the  system  of  cus- 
toms or  laws  which  constitute  a  part  of  every  individual's 
social  environment. 

It  would  seem  also  that,  in  order  to  convert  the  feeling  of 
repulsion  awakened  by  any  painful  experience  into  a  nega- 
tive feeling  of  obligation,  the  enforcement  of  the  prohibitory 
custom  or  law  must  be  recognized  as  arising  from  a  personal 
source.  The  memory-image  of  the  pain  of  burning  teaches 
the  child  that  it  should  not  again  take  in  hand  the  hot 
coal  or  drink  from  the  steaming  cup  of  milk.  The  linger- 
ing reminiscence  of  how  the  dog  reacted  after  its  tail  had 
been  carelessly  or  sportively  trodden  upon  by  the  child 
stirs  up  and  enforces  a  consciousness  more  nearly  resembling 
the  first  crude  beginnings  of  the  feeling  of  obligation. 
And,  indeed,  in  its  earlier  experiences,  things,  animals, 
and  its  fellow  human  beings  are  not  clearly  distinguished, 
either  as  respects  the  feelings  entertained  toward  them  or 
as  respects  the  feelings  with  which  the  childish  imagina- 
tion has  endowed  them.  From  this  point  of  view  the  child 
who  punishes  with  a  kick  the  stone  that  has  stumbled  him, 
and  the  savage  who  threatens  or  destroys  the  fetish  which 
has  failed  to  bring  him  the  fitting  good  luck,  are  very 
much   in  the   same   attitude  of  mind.     In  the  case  of  the 


74  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

animal  no  long  time  is  needed  to  discover  that,  whatever 
may  be  the  feelings  of  the  stone  or  of  the  fetish,  it  has  within 
a  well-spring  of  appetites  and  passions  similar  to  the  child's 
own,  and  a  store  of  like  painful  and  pleasurable  experiences. 
It  is  not  unlikely,  however,  that  the  cause  of  the  abused 
animal  may  be  espoused  by  some  human  being  who  has  either 
the  rights  of  ownership  in  it,  or  is  moved  to  protect  the 
animal's  interest  by  either  anger  or  fear,  or  sympathy.  In 
any  such  case  as  this  other  more  intelligible  signs  of  a  social 
and  at  least  quasi-morsil  disapprobation  are  brought  to  the 
attention  of  the  offending  child.  The  "should-not,"  or 
"better-not,"  unless  you  want  to  get  hurt,  becomes  an 
"  ought-not "  because  it  is  not  right,  because  the  act  causes 
pain  to  some  other  sentient  life.  It  is  probable,  however, 
that  those  influences  tending  to  stir  the  more  primitive  mov- 
ings  of  the  consciousness  of  the  ought,  which  come  from  his 
earlier  relations  with  things  and  animals,  are  relatively  insig- 
nificant when  compared  with  those  that  are  due  to  the  same 
child's  more  direct  transactions  with  human  beings.  And 
here  the  principles  of  imitation  and  of  what  may  be  called 
tribal  sympathy  are  very  important.  The  former  of  these 
influences  is  a  powerful  factor  in  the  education  of  certain 
selected  classes  of  actions,  — those,  namely,  which  constitute 
the  forms  of  conduct  preferred  by  the  life  of  the  community. 
The  physical  conditions,  or  the  economic  and  religious  con- 
siderationsj  in  which  the  customs  originated  may  have  been 
long  ago  forgotten.  They  may,  indeed,  never  have  been 
brought  to  a  clear,  conscious  recognition  by  the  popular 
mind.  But  such  ignorance  as  this  has  no  influence  whatever 
to  deter  the  unreflecting  child  or  adult  from  falling  in  with 
the  custom ;  —  and  this  all  the  more  heartily  if  he  has  earlier 
been  made  the  subject  of  painful  impressions  on  account  of 
either  an  impulsive  or  a  more  deliberate  breach  of  any  of 
the  prevalent  forms  of  conduct.  All  expressions  of  social 
disapprobation  serve  to  stir  the  movements  of  the  conscious 


THE  FEELING  OF  OBLIGATION  75 

feeling  of  the  "  ought-not ; "  the  less  frequent  and  pronounced 
expressions  of  social  approbation  arouse  the  feeling  which 
answers  to  the  words  "I  ought;"  and  the  principle  of  imi- 
tation, so  universal,  so  powerful,  so  little  dependent  upon 
thought,  re-enforces  and  repeats  unceasingly  the  occasions 
for  both  these  allied  forms  of  the  feeling  of  obligation.  Thus 
this  distinctively  ethical  emotion  separates  itself  in  con- 
sciousness from  the  accompanying  feelings  of  pleasure  and 
pain;  and  thus,  although  always  attended  by  them,  it  be- 
comes more  and  more  discernible  as  just  that  peculiar  and 
distinctively  social  and  moral  feeling  which  it  is  —  having 
a  character  to  fit  it  for  its  most  primeval  and  essential 
position  in  man's  endowment  for  the  moral  life. 

Man,  like  all  the  other  higher  animals,  and  more  power- 
fully and  intelligently  than  any  of  them,  is  under  the  influ- 
ence of  tribal  sympathy.  He  feels  a  strong  and  almost 
irresistible  tendency,  the  origin  and  significance  of  which  he 
by  no  means  wholly  comprehends,  to  share  in  the  emotions 
and  sentiments  of  the  community  of  his  fellows.  For  sympa- 
thy appears,  when  understood  in  the  most  fundamental  way, 
to  be  no  one  particular  form  of  affective  excitement.  It  is 
the  rather  that  tendency  of  which  all  human  beings  partake 
to  run  together  in  common  channels  of  feeling,  —  be  this 
feeling  of  whatsoever  kind.  Thus  the  title  "  sympathetic  " 
applies  to  all  the  natural  forms  of  human  emotion  and  senti- 
ment; and  our  investigation  of  man's  equipment  for  the 
moral  life  must  take  account  of  sympathetic  anger,  sympa- 
thetic fear,  sympathetic  pride,  etc.,  — on  to  the  end  of  the 
chapter  which  enumerates  the  different  forms  of  feeling 
common  to  mankind.  To  classify  the  various  passions  and 
affections,  then,  as  "egoistic"  and  "altruistic,"  is  to  pre- 
pare the  way  for  a  confusion  of  qualifications  that  are  dis- 
tinctly different  by  making  at  the  outset  a  distinction  which 
is  false.  Anger,  fear,  pride,  jealousy,  etc.,  and  love  and 
hate,  may  all  be  either  egoistic  or  altruistic ;  and  as  a  rule 


76  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

they  all  are  both,  because  they  are  rarely  free  from  the  in- 
fluence of  a  sympathetic  tendency  to  share  in  the  feelings  of 
the  tribe. 

It  is  plain,  however,  that  the  words  "tribe  "  and  "tribal  " 
must  be,  in  this  connection,  somewhat  liberally  interpreted. 
In  the  dawn  of  the  moral  life,  when  the  feeling  of  obligation 
is  just  emerging  into  consciousness,  one's  "  tribe  "  is  repre- 
sented by  the  few  individuals  of  the  same  —  namely,  the 
human  kind,  who  constitute  the  more  definite  social  environ- 
ment. These  are  the  objects  which  the  child  early  comes  to 
recognize  as,  more  than  other  things  including  the  lower 
animals,  like  itself.  It  is,  indeed,  the  reactions  that  take 
place  in  its  relations  with  such  like  objects,  which  enable  the 
child  to  constitute  itself  as  a  moral  Self  in  social  intercourse 
with  other  moral  selves.  Naturally,  instinctively,  and  at 
first  quite  irresistibly,  the  human  infant  feels  the  impulse  to 
the  same  emotions  and  sentiments  which  those  of  its  own 
peculiar  kind  show  that  they  feel.  Thus,  not  only  does  it 
come  to  imitate  them  in  all  their  fixed  forms  of  action,  but 
also  to  accompany  these  actions  with  the  same  forms  of  feel- 
ing which  they  display.  In  this  manner  does  the  feeling  of 
the  ought  become  intensified,  made  more  distinctly  social ; 
thus  does  the  feeling  get  itself  fixed  in  connection  with  those 
definite,  concrete  actions  which  the  community  prescribes  to 
the  individual  as  the  right  form  of  conduct  for  him.  For 
there  is  something  painful  and  unnatural  in  an  individual's 
not  feeling  with  the  other  individuals  of  his  own  kind.  In 
some  such  way,  I  believe,  is  the  origin  of  the  feeling  of  ought- 
ness  to  be  described,  and  its  earlier  developments  explained. 

So  far  as  the  earlier  exhibitions  of  the  feeling  of  obliga- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  race  are  concerned,  they  appear  to 
resemble  those  of  the  individual  member  of  the  race.  But 
here  observation,  as  well  as  memory,  soon  fails  to  furnish 
trustworthy  facts.  But  the  truth,  as  supported  by  ethno- 
logical and  anthropological  researches,  is  as  follows:   The 


THE  FEELING  OF   OBLIGATION  77 

individual  members  of  the  more  childish  and  undeveloped 
tribes  and  races  show  signs  of  a  strong  but  blind  and  un- 
intelligent feeling  of  obligation  binding  them,  under  the 
influence  of  the  psychological  forces  of  imitation  and  sym- 
pathy, to  those  forms  of  conduct  which  are  the  fixed  customs 
of  the  same  tribes  and  races.  Here,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
individual  in  early  life,  even  among  the  most  upright  and 
intelligent  communities,  custom  and  morality  are  nearly 
identical.  For  the  feeling  of  oughtness  is  first  aroused  and 
trained  to  service  in  the  behalf  of  the  prevalent  customs. 
At  the  moment  when  the  custom  is  either  obeyed  or  dis- 
obeyed, with  an  accompanying  excitement  of  this  peculiar 
emotion,  the  moral  life  on  the  side  of  feeling  has  already 
begun.  For  there  has  arisen  in  the  human  consciousness  a 
disturbance  which  is  significant  of  something  having  another 
value  than  that  of  mere  pleasure^  and  which  is  pregnant  with 
the  promise  of  another  than  the  merely  sensuous  or  intellectual 
life. 

It  should  be  noticed  in  this  connection  that  the  early 
movements  of  the  feeling  of  obligation  are  very  frequently 
strongest  in  the  direction  of  that  which  is  sensuously  painful 
or  repulsive.  Indeed,  this  is  probably  the  rule.  In  the 
family  or  tribe  where  the  code  of  conduct  is  most  simple  and 
void  of  compliance  with  the  principles  of  a  high-toned  moral- 
ity, the  sufferings  which  excite  and  enforce  the  feeling,  "I 
ought  not,"  ordinarily  much  exceed  the  pleasures  which  are 
experienced  through  satisfaction  of  the  feeling,  "I  ought." 
The  boy  trained  to  picking  and  stealing  commonly  has  small 
share  in  the  proceeds  of  success  in  his  art.  But  if  he  fails, 
or  if  he  turns  his  acquired  skill  against  those  who  have 
trained  him  and  have  habitually  profited  by  his  success,  his 
sufferings  become  the  more  abundant.  And  if  we  try  to 
apply  any  theory  which  identifies  even  the  crudest  begin- 
nings of  the  feeling  of  obligation  with  any  member  of  the 
pleasure-pain  series,  in  the  case  of  multitudes  of  the  race. 


78  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

and  especially  where  the  mysterious  but  almost  omnipotent 
motives  of  religion  are  felt;  what  anomalies  arise!  Here 
one  might  appeal  to  instances  like  the  following :  —  to  the 
ignorant  devotee  of  popular  Hinduism,  who  feels  that  he 
ought  to  make  his  disgusting  beverage  of  the  secretions  of 
the  sacred  cow ;  or  to  the  learned  and  honored  chief  justice 
of  one  of  the  provinces  of  India  who  considered  it  his  duty 
daily  to  drink  the  water  in  which  his  mother  had  washed  her 
feet! 

To  take  other  instances ;  the  strictest  of  the  Jains  will  not 
drink  water  which  has  not  been  boiled  by  some  one  else,  or 
breathe  in  air  which  has  not  been  filtered  through  some 
screen,  lest  perchance,  they  may  violate  the  feeling  of  obli- 
^j-ation  not  to  destroy  animal  life.  But  the  English  milord 
takes  pride  in  publishing  the  scores  of  thousands  of  living 
things,  to  kill  which  he  has  with  good  conscience  devoted 
himself  as  to  his  life  sport.  The  former  looks  upon  the 
latter  as  guilty  of  the  most  heinous  crimes;  the  latter 
regards  the  former  as  being,  on  account  of  his  silly  supersti- 
tion, somewhat  beneath  contempt.  But  after  all,  if  the  two 
are  coming  upon  any  common  ground  of  meeting  within  the 
domain  of  ethical  feeling,  the  one  must  acknowledge  the 
obligation  to  suffer  one's  self  rather  than  destroy  another's 
good ;  and  the  other  must  smother  the  obligation  not  to 
destroy  another's  good  by  strictly  attending  rather  to  the 
satisfaction  of  his  own  desire  for  pleasure.  Which  is  the 
more  moral  of  the  two  does  not  concern  us  at   this  point. 

Undoubtedly,  feelings  of  selfish  interest,  and  the  desire 
to  earn  for  one's  self  the  greater  reward  mingle  in  all 
these  and  similar  instances.  But  whoever,  with  lawyer-like 
subtlety,  argues  that  these  elements  solve  the  problem  of  the 
entire  conscious  state,  and  that  we  have  not  here  to  deal 
with  something  quite  distinctive  and  unique,  simply  does 
not  know  his  case. 

It  appears,  then,  that  the  student  of  ethics  must  assume, 


THE  FEELING  OF  OBLIGATION  79 

as  the  necessary  presupposition  of  the  origin  and  develop- 
ment of  the  moral  life,  the  existence  in  man's  consciousness 
of  the  germinal  feeling  of  obligation.  In  its  earliest 
manifestations  this  feeling  is  vague  and  obscure,  as  is  the 
case  with  all  emotional  excitements;  and,  like  all  other 
forms  of  feeling,  it  is  mixed  with  emotional  excitements  of 
a  different  order  and  kind.  But  there  it  is  —  defying  further 
analysis,  yet  demanding  recognition  as  something  quite 
peculiar  in  the  complex  content  of  the  individual  soul. 
Like  the  other  earlier  manifestations  of  psychical  life,  we 
can  rarely  or  never  put  our  finger  precisely  upon  the  time  of 
its  origin;  but,  as  a  rule,  it  appears  whenever  by  rod,  or 
gesture,  or  language  coming  from  one  of  his  own  kind,  the 
natural  impulses  of  the  child  are  checked  and  corrected 
through  a  conflict  with  the  custom  of  his  social  environment. 
Much  less  can  its  origin  be  traced  with  the  whole  race 
of  men,  by  any  possible  extension  of  anthropological  re- 
searches. Man,  as  man,  is  from  the  first  equipped  with 
this  peculiar  form  of  feeling  in  reaction  upon  his  existing 
social  environment. 

And  moreover,  although  one  can  never  speak  with  a  per- 
fect confidence  respecting  one's  analysis  of  the  consciousness 
of  the  lower  animals,  there  is  sufficient  reason  to  hold  that 
the  feeling  of  obligation  is  uniquely  human.  We  have  no 
evidence  that  an  emotional  excitement,  much  less  a  rational 
judgment,  corresponding  to  the  phrase,  "I  ought,"  ever 
arises  in  the  mind  of  any  of  the  lower  animals.  Anger, 
fear,  pride,  jealousy,  sympathy,  love  and  hate,  they  share 
with  man.  In  these  forms  of  feeling  they  are,  if  you  please, 
our  younger  and  weaker  brethren.  Under  the  influence  of 
such  emotions  they  perform  deeds  which  have  the  semblance 
of  human  virtues,  and  which  we  cannot  help  (and  need  not 
try  to  help)  admiring  with  a  truly  ethical  approbation. 
We  admire  these  actions,  with  a  truly  ethical  and  not  merely 
an  aesthetical  admiration ;  because  we  feel  that  they  are  the 


80  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

actions  which,  under  the  circumstances,  ought  to  be  done. 
Were  we  so  situated,  as  is  the  cat  whose  kittens  are  in 
danger  of  burning  or  the  dog  whose  master  is  attacked,  and 
tempted  to  sacrifice  our  feeling  of  duty  to  the  instinct  of  self- 
preservation,  we  feel  that  our  highest  satisfaction  would 
come  in  resistance  to  the  temptation.  That  the  animal  is 
tempted,  as  we  are  tempted,  that  a  feeling  of  obligation  is 
aroused  in  favor  of  that  which  is  threatening  to  the  interests 
of  the  pleasure-pain  sort,  that  resistance  to  the  temptation 
will  be  followed  by  the  feeling  of  a  satisfied  moral  conscious- 
ness, —  all  this,  and  all  that  is  strictly  of  the  same  order  as 
this,  there  is  apparently  no  sufficient  reason  for  attributing 
to  the  animal  consciousness.  But  whatever  psychology  and 
biology  may  enable  us  to  decide  about  all  this  (and  it  is 
entirely  unlikely  that  they  will  ever  enable  us  to  decide  in 
view  of  any  newly  discovered  reasons),  the  truth  of  ethics 
remains  unchanged.  Man  has  this  feeling  of  obligation. 
In  its  most  primitive  form,  it  is  peculiar,  distinctively 
moral,  and  to  be  recognized  and  classed  apart.  Its  first 
appearance  in  any  series  of  conscious  states  marks  the 
dawning,  the  first  distinctive  fact  of  the  moral  life. 

It  is  the  more  necessary  to  insist  upon  this  result  of  the 
analysis  of  the  content  of  moral  consciousness,  because  con- 
fusion or  lack  of  clearness  here  is  apt  to  vitiate  all  one's 
subsequent  theoretical  conclusions.  This  is  especially  true 
of  those  writers  on  ethics  who  advocate  unreservedly  the 
purely  Eudaemonistic  and  evolutionary  points  of  view. 
Their  psychological  basis  is  in  general  not  well  taken. 
What,  for  example,  but  such  lack  of  clear  analysis  could 
lead  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen,^  with  that  splendid  but  scarcely 
justifiable  confidence  which  characterizes  those  who  expect 
to  find  all  the  sources  of  a  valid  view  of  ethical  problems  in 
the  still  muddy  and  rapidly  shifting  currents  of  biological 
evolution,  to  deny  the  unique  character  of  the  feeling  func- 

1  The  Science  of  Ethics,  p.  311  f. 


THE  FEELING  OF  OBLIGATION  81 

tion  of  so-called  conscience  by  contrasting  it  with  the  opera- 
tions of  the  sense  of  hearing  ? "  "  The  ear, "  says  he,  "  decides 
authoritatively  that  certain  sounds  are  discordant  and  others 
harmonious. "  But  conscience  does  not  so  decide.  Now  the 
illustration  is  most  apt  in  contradiction  of  the  view  it  is 
designed  to  illustrate.  As  mere  feeling,  the  ear  "decides" 
nothing;  as  mere  feeling,  conscience  decides  nothing. 
Decision  in  matters  of  sense  or  of  conduct  is  an  affair  of  the 
judgment.  The  psychological  facts  are  these:  In  the  one 
case  a  form  of  pleasurable  or  painful  feeling  arises  which  is 
capable  of  becoming  modified  and  cultivated,  while  not 
essentially  altered ;  and  so  of  being  the  emotional  basis,  as 
it  were,  for  a  certain  class  of  judgments,  for  a  certain  kind 
of  aesthetical  satisfaction  and  aesthetical  development.  By 
making  the  necessary  changes  a  similar  declaration  may  be 
confidently  ventured  with  respect  to  the  relations  in  which 
the  feeling  of  obligation  stands  to  the  origin  and  develop- 
ment of  the  moral  life.  It  is,  probably,  about  as  correct  to 
say  that  the  lower  animals  have  no  true  feelings  of  harmony 
or  discord  as  to  say  that  they  have  no  true  feeling  of  obliga- 
tion. Both  these  classes  of  feelings  have  to  be  assumed 
before  one  can  advance  a  single  step  in  comprehending  either 
the  aesthetical  or  the  moral  development  of  man.  How, 
too,  does  Professor  Sidgwick  completely  miss  the  mark  at 
this  point  by  identifying  the  question  as  to  the  primary  char- 
acter of  this  kind  of  affective  consciousness  with  the  ques- 
tion as  to  the  "  rationality  "  of  conduct !  ^ 

After  accepting  the  general  correspondence  to  the  facts 
of  this  account  of  the  most  primitive  feeling  which  charac- 
terizes the  beginnings  of  man's  moral  life,  it  is  not  difficult 
to  trace  its  unfolding  in  a  series  of  judgments  and  habits  of 
action.  For  the  emotional  excitement  out  of  which  emerges 
the  consciousness  of  obligation  is  not  wont  to  occur  without 
some  definite  occasion  and  content  of  an  intellective  and 

1  The  Methods  of  Ethics,  book  I,  chap.  iii. 
6 


82  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

volitional  sort.  As  everywhere  else  in  the  psychical  life, 
so  in  the  more  distinctly  ethical  forms  of  that  life,  it  is  con- 
crete, individual  experiences  and  not  abstract  conceptions  or 
any  slightest  grasp  upon  general  principles,  in  which  the 
origins  of  morality  must  be  sought.  The  simple  initial  fact 
in  the  evolution  of  the  moral  consciousness  of  the  individual 
is  this:  the  feeling  of  oughtness  gets  itself  connected  with 
the  idea  of  a  certain  action  and,  of  course  also,  with  the 
inner  experience  in  which  this  action  has  its  impulse  or  its 
motive.  For  example,  under  the  spur  of  anger  the  young 
human  animal  strikes  a  blow;  or  moved  by  impulsive  desire 
it  snatches  and  craftily  conceals  another's  toy.  Or,  yet 
again,  the  influence  of  imitation  and  of  impulsive  sympathy 
leads  the  child  to  surrender  to  some  fellow  a  portion  of  its 
own  good.  The  expressions  of  social  approval  or  disap- 
proval thus  called  forth,  may  easily  constitute  a  first  lesson 
in  morals.  Pain  reinforces  the  negative  pole  of  the  feeling 
of  obligation;  pleasure,  its  positive  pole.  For  although 
pleasure-pains  never  form  the  essential  whole  of  the  feeling 
of  being  morally  bound ;  they  do  serve  to  bind  this  feeling 
to  certain  definite,  concrete  actions  and  to  their  originating 
or  accompanying  states  of  consciousness. 

Next  in  the  evolution  of  the  moral  life  must  be  noted  the 
effect  of  repetition  and  the  operation  of  the  law  of  habit. 
This  is  true  both  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race.  For  the 
study  of  ethics  never  discovers  the  individual  in  any  situa- 
tion where  he  is  not  compelled  by  his  social  environment  to 
the  repetition  of  certain  experiences  and  to  the  formation 
of  the  corresponding  habits.  Nor  is  it  possible  to  conceive  of 
the  whole  of  mankind,  or  of  any  isolated  portion  of  the  race, 
as  beginning  their  ethical  development  in  a  vacuum  from 
which  all  the  residuary  habits  of  their  ancestors  have  been 
removed.  Always  and  everywhere,  the  experiences  which 
tend  to  connect  the  feeling  of  obligation  with  certain  con- 
crete kinds  of  conduct  are  sure  to  be  repeated.     Thus  habits 


THE  FEELING   OF   OBLIGATION  83 

of  association  are  formed  between  definite  actions  and  the 
ethical  feeling  of  obligation. 

It  is  certain  that  in  the  earlier  stages  of  moral  evolution 
only  a  minimum  of  judgment,  and  little  or  no  attempt  to 
form  abstract  conceptions  of  right  and  wrong,  accompanies 
the  advances  of  the  moral  life.  Neither  in  ethical  nor  in 
other  concernments,  do  men  first  generalize  and  then  experi- 
ence the  feelings  appropriate  to  their  generalizations.  The 
child  of  an  advanced  civilization  and  the  childish  savage 
both  proceed  from  feeling  to  judgment  rather  than  in  the 
reverse  direction.  Therefore  that  is  first  judged  to  be  right 
which  has  actually,  through  the  powerful  influence  of  the 
social  environment,  aroused  the  feeling  of  oughtness;  and 
that  is  judged  to  be  wrong  which  has,  through  the  same 
influences  working  in  the  opposite  direction  been  welded  to 
the  feeling,  I  ought  not.  In  the  first  instance  of  argument 
with  one's  self,  if  argument  at  all  there  be,  the  reasoning  of 
the  unfolding  moral  Self  runs  as  follows:  I  judge  this  wrong, 
because  the  idea  of  it  excites  the  feeling  of  ought-not ;  but 
I  judge  that  right,  because  the  idea  of  it  excites  the  feeling, 
I  ought.  In  a  word,  the  earlier  inchoate  forms  of  moral 
judgment  are  made  upon  a  basis  of  the  feeling  of  obligation, 
after  this  feeling  of  obligation  has  been  aroused,  directed, 
and  associated  according  to  forms  pre-existing  in  the  in- 
dividual's social  environment. 

But  the  relation  which  judgments  of  this  class  sustain  to 
the  feeling  of  obligation  does  not  remain  unchanged.  The 
second  stage  in  the  cultivation  of  the  "  ought-consciousness" 
is  quickly  reached.  In  this  stage  judgment  begins  to  take 
the  lead;  a  growing  intelligence  assumes  the  guidance  of 
feeling.  Certain  attitudes  of  the  moral  Self  toward  particular 
forms  of  conduct  which  express  these  attitudes  are  now 
to  be  made  the  basis  of  generalizations  which  bring  them 
under  the  predicates  "wrong"  and  "right."  The  condi- 
tions of  reaching  this  second  stage  of  moral   development 


84  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

require  attention  to  the  following  three  considerations. 
Language  is  the  first,  if  not  the  indispensable  condition  of 
such  development.  Human  society  informs  its  new  members 
by  speech  as  to  what  they  must  judge  about  different  kinds 
of  conduct  under  the  category  belonging  to  all  conduct. 
This  category  is,  of  course,  that  of  the  morally  right  (and 
its  opposite).  Early  judgments  that  are  not  merely  expres- 
sive of  impulsive  or  habitual  forms  of  feeling,  but  are  the 
result  and  the  expression  of  a  process  of  generalization  are 
themselves,  for  the  most  part,  taught  in  words.  In  matters 
of  conduct  these  words  signify  the  approbation  or  disappro- 
bation, the  collective  "ought-consciousness,"  of  the  social 
environment.  They  convey  to  the  child  the  resultants  of  the 
forces  which  have  worked  through  generations  of  experience 
to  produce  a  certain  average  moral  status,  in  those  forms  of 
conception  and  judgment  which  human  language  permits. 
It  is  not  right  to  lie,  to  steal,  to  strike  in  anger;  or,  at 
least,  it  is  wrong  to  lie  to  some  persons,  if  permissible  in 
other  cases;  it  is  wrong  to  steal  from  one's  parents  or  one's 
"pals,"  although  encouraged  by  them  to  steal,  when  others 
are  the  victims,  etc.  The  acceptance,  out  of  deference  to 
pre-existent  and  all-encompassing  social  authority,  of  a  cer- 
tain set  of  rules,  precepts,  maxims,  or  other  forms  of  gener- 
alized judgments,  reverses  in  a  measure  the  relation  hitherto 
maintained  between  the  intellect  and  the  feeling  of  obliga- 
tion. The  order  of  relation  in  the  quasi-moral  argument  now 
becomes  somewhat  as  follows :  I  feel  that  I  ought  not  to  do 
this,  because  —  as  I  have  been  taught  and,  therefore,  myself 
judge  —  it  is  wrong ;  or  I  feel  that  I  ought  to  do  that,  be- 
cause I  know  that  it  is  right.  In  this  second  stage  of  the 
cultivation  of  the  feeling  of  obligation,  feeling  tends  rather 
to  follow  judgment  than,  as  in  the  earlier  stage,  wholly  to 
determine  it. 

In  this  connection,  however,  another  set  of  considerations 
becomes   most   important.     These  concern  the  effects   of  a 


THE  FEELING  OF  OBLIGATION  85 

fusion  of  the  "  ought-consciousness  "  with  particular  passions 
and  affections  so  as  to  make  the  latter  themselves  the  objects 
of  the  feeling  of  oughtness.  It  is  in  the  fact  of  such  a  fusion 
that  the  view  of  the  so-called  "  Emotional  Intuitionists  "  finds 
its  support.  The  fact  is  significant  and  undoubted.  But 
the  view  taken  by  these  theorists  misinterprets  the  signifi- 
cance of  the  fact  through  misunderstanding  its  psychological 
nature  and  origin.  "  In  a  Creature  capable  of  forming  gen- 
eral Notions  of  Things,"  says  Lord  Shaftesbury, ^  "not  only 
the  outward  Beings  which  offer  themselves  to  the  Sense,  are 
the  Objects  of  Affection;  but  the  very  Actions  themselves, 
and  the  Affections  of  Pity,  Kindness,  Gratitude,  and  their 
Contrarys,  being  brought  into  the  Mind  by  Reflection,  be- 
come Objects.  So  that,  by  means  of  this  reflected  Sense, 
there  arises  another  kind  of  Affection  toward  those  very 
Affections  themselves,  which  have  been  already  felt,  and  are 
now  become  the  Subject  of  a  new  Liking  or  Dislike."  Now 
that  the  feeling  of  obligation  becomes  attached  to,  or  fused 
with,  the  different  forms  of  affective  excitement,  so  that  men 
come  to  regard  these  forms  as  partaking  of  that  quality  to 
which  the  ought-consciousness  responds,  is  an  obvious  ex- 
perience. But  the  experience  is  not  a  proof,  it  is  not  even 
an  indication  of  the  truthfulness  of  that  view  which  regards 
some  of  these  passions  and  affections  as  having  inherently  a 
superior  moral  quality  (or,  indeed,  any  moral  quality  at  all) ; 
or  which  represents  conscience  as  the  innate  tact  or  faculty 
of  judgment  capable  of  discriminating  this  inherent  superior 
quality.  All  the  natural  passions  and  affections  of  man  — 
anger,  fear,  pride,  jealousy,  sympathy,  love,  and  hate  —  are 
in  themselves  equally  moral,  or  rather  non-moral.  But  by 
their  mixture  with  each  other,  their  attachment  to  the 
feeling  of  obligation,  their  indulgence  or  control  by  the 
intellect  in  the  pursuit  of  various  ends,  they  become  either 

1  Inquiry,  Book  I,  Part  ii,  Section  3  j  See  L.  A.  Selby-Bigge,  British  Moral- 
ists, I,  p.  11. 


86  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

good  or  bad.  All  these  passions  and  affections  alike  may  be 
called  the  "stuff"  or  raw  material  of  certain  virtues  and 
vices.  Their  virtuousness  or  viciousness  does  not  arise  from 
the  insight  of  any  inborn  or  quasi-divine  faculty  of  feeling  or 
of  judgment,  but  is  created  by  the  connections  brought  about 
between  them  and  the  "  ought-consciousness"  as  the  result  of 
early  education  and  of  social  influences. 

In  communities  where  ethical  development  is  still  in  a 
low  and  relatively  primitive  stage  (and  this  is  true  in  not  a 
few  respects  of  the  most  highly  civilized  [sic]  and  so-called 
Christian  communities),  certain  kinds  of  anger,  fear,  pride, 
jealousy,  and  hate,  which  a  refined  and  rational  morality  con- 
demns, are  not  only  tolerated  but  are  approbated  as  though 
they  were  the  most  fundamental,  if  not  the  most  exalted  of 
the  virtues.  In  communities  which  have  reached  a  higher 
stage  of  ethical  development,  the  force  of  the  feeling  of  obli- 
gation may  give  to  the  natural  and  equally  non-moral  feel- 
ings of  pity,  kindness,  gratitude  (though  to  this  last,  most 
rarely  of  all),  a  character  which  a  still  higher  point  of  view 
must  regard  with  doubt  when  the  claim  is  set  up  that  these 
feelings  are  the  chiefest  and  most  distinctively  right  forms 
of  affection.  The  truth  is  obvious  enough ;  it  is  simply  this. 
The  frequent  arousing  of  the  consciousness  of  obligation  in 
connection  with  any  form  of  the  passions  and  affections 
seems,  in  the  first  instance,  to  make  men  blindly  feel  that 
some  of  them  ought,  and  others  ought  not,  to  exist  in  con- 
sciousness or  to  be  indulged.  Judgments  affirming  the  obli- 
gation are  immediately  framed  in  view  of  this  fusion  of 
feeling;  these  judgments  are  also  taught  in  terms  which 
express  to  the  individual  the  formulated  moral  law  of  his 
social  superiors.  So  that,  if  at  first  the  child  simply  feels 
the  obligation  to  indulge  or  to  control  anger,  pride,  etc.,  and 
bases  its  more  primitive  judgments  on  this  feeling,  it  soon 
accepts  the  judgment,  It  is  right  (or  wrong)  to  indulge  anger, 
pride,  etc. ;  and   feels  that,  because  ib  is  right  (or  wrong), 


THE  FEELING  OF  OBLIGATION  8T 

anger,  pride,  etc.,  ought  (or  ought  not)  to  be  indulged  (or  to 
be  controlled). 

A  certain  primacy  of  feeling  in  the  actual  order  of  the 
moral  life  may,  then,  properly  be  maintained.  But  to  main- 
tain (as  does,  for  example,  Hermann  Schwarz)  that  we 
immediately  feel  the  worth  of  sympathy  to  be  higher  than 
that  of  selfishness  is  to  mistake  the  psychology  of  moral 
feeling,  and  the  history  of  the  evolution  of  customs  and  of 
morality.  For  psychology  knows  no  such  simple  form  of 
feeling  or  mental  principle  of  any  sort  as  selfishness ;  and, 
as  we  have  already  seen  (p.  75  f. ),  sympathy  is  a  word  which 
must  stand  for  that  universal  tendency  to  feel  with  the  feeling 
of  the  other  members  of  the  same  species  which  belongs  to 
man  everywhere,  and,  indeed,  to  many  species  of  the  lower 
animals. 

Certain  forms  of  man's  varied  emotional  equipment  are, 
indeed,  much  more  likely  than  others  to  lead  to  attacks  upon 
the  person  and  property  of  others,  and  so  to  wrong-doing 
whether  in  the  form  of  a  breach  of  custom  or  a  violation  of 
the  precepts  of  the  higher  morality.  Certain  other  forms  are 
much  more  frequently  on  the  side,  as  it  were,  of  established 
custom  and  of  the  purer  moral  precept.  Thus  anger,  jeal- 
ousy, and  hate  are  in  the  main,  and  rightly,  esteemed  wrong 
by  the  cultivated  moral  consciousness ;  pity,  generosity,  and 
love  are  deemed  to  have  a  higher  worth  when  they  appear 
for  judgment  at  the  bar  where  refined  feeling  renders  its 
verdict.  On  the  other  hand,  however,  anger,  jealousy,  and 
even  hatred,  safeguard  not  only  the  rights  of  the  individual 
but  also  the  marital  and  other  rights  of  the  family,  the  tribe, 
and  the  nation ;  —  yes,  in  the  last  resort,  the  sacred  and 
eternal  rights  of  the  weak  and  defenceless  members  of  the 
human  race  against  the  violent  or  the  insidious  endeavors  of 
the  unscrupulous  rich  and  the  strong.  And  the  individual, 
or  the  race,  that  had  not  just  these  forms  of  emotional 
excitement  committed  —  however  fitfully  and  imperfectly  — 


88  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

to  the  interests  of  moral  development  would  have  small 
chance  indeed  of  realizing  the  moral  ideal.  How  far  off  the 
most  civilized  communities  are  at  present  from  this  ideal  may 
be  judged  by  this  among  many  other  indications :  they  can 
scarcely  conceive  of  these  emotions  being  other  than  selfish ; 
while  unthinking  pity,  generous  use  of  the  fruits  of  injus- 
tice, and  injudicious  and  injurious  love  are  without  further 
critical  examination  commended  as  giving  satisfaction  to  the 
consciousness  of  obligation. 

When  then,  as  Lord  Shaftesbury  said,  "  the  affections  of 
pity,  kindness,  gratitude,  and  their  contraries,"  become 
themselves  "the  objects  of  affection,"  "the  subjects  of  a  new 
liking  or  dislike,"  a  new  phase  in  the  culture  of  the  con- 
sciousness of  obligation  results.  The  human  being  begins 
to  feel :  I  ought  (or  ought-not)  to  be  angry,  jealous,  fearful, 
pitiful,  generous,  kind,  etc.  From  the  very  nature  of  human 
society,  the  so-called  altruistic  feelings  come,  on  the  whole, 
to  have  upon  their  side  the  feeling  of  obligation  —  at  least, 
within  the  limits  of  the  community  which  is  regarded  as 
constituting  the  individual's  peculiar  social  environment. 
Such  a  stage  of  ethical  development  is,  as  a  rule,  embodied 
in  the  social  principle :  Every  man  ought  to  love  his  neighbor 
and  hate  his  enemy. 

A  third  set  of  considerations  serves  to  make  clearer  the 
place  which  the  feeling  of  obligation  holds  in  the  original 
equipment  and  continuous  development  of  the  moral  life. 
As  in  the  case  of  all  other  judgments,  so  in  respect  of  judg- 
ments concerning  the  right  and  wrong  of  conduct,  men  grow 
in  knowledge  by  asking  and  answering  the  question.  Why  ? 
In  this  case  also,  as  in  the  case  of  all  kinds  of  judgments, 
the  answer  may  be  either  specious  or  genuine.  It  may  serve 
to  satisfy  the  demand  for  explanation  either  by  distracting 
the  attention  or  by  disclosing  a  real  reason.  When  I  say:  I 
judge  this  to  be  right,  because  I  feel  it  ought  to  be  done ;  or 
that  wrong,  because  1  feel  it  ought  not  to  be  done,  the  import 


THE  FEELING  OF   OBLIGATION  89 

of  my  judgment  is  still  simply  this:  I  have  the  feeling  of 
obligation  to  do  or  not  to  do.  That  is  to  say,  the  judgment 
is  declarative  of  a  subjective  and  mainly  affective  attitude  of 
the  Self.  The  word  "  because  "  adds  no  real  reason  to  the 
judgment.  When,  however,  I  say:  I  both  judge  and  feel 
this  class  of  actions  to  be  right,  and  the  other  to  be  wrong, 
because  they  are  accordant  with,  or  contrary  to,  the  precept, 
maxim,  law,  or  custom,  which  has  become  a  part  of  my 
intellectual  equipment  for  the  moral  life,  then  I  do  ground 
both  judgment  and  feeling  in  reasons  that  lie  in  part  beyond 
themselves. 

But  a  still  further  stage  in  moral  development  is  inevi- 
table. Some  time  and  somehow  —  perhaps  frequently  and  in 
many  ways  —  the  child  growing  to  adult  life  and  influenced 
by  varied  experiences,  asks  of  the  very  judgments  it  has 
unthinkingly  accepted  from  society  still  a  reason,  Why  ? 
As  in  other  matters,  so  in  ethical  concernments,  the  preva- 
lent maxims,  precepts,  laws,  and  customs  must  account  to 
the  intellect  of  the  individual  for  their  own  right  to  exist- 
ence as  the  guides  and  lords  of  his  moral  life.  And  with 
the  raising  of  this  question  there  goes  inevitably  a  new  agi- 
tation of  the  feeling  of  obligation ;  —  an  inquiry  whether, 
after  all,  this  feeling  itself  "  ought  to "  maintain  its  own 
time-honored  attachments  and  associations  !  The  problem : 
"  Ought  I  really  to  feel  as  I  actually  feel  I  ought  ? "  is  surely 
one  of  the  strangest  and  yet  most  significant  and  interesting 
of  all  problems.  Its  meaning  and  its  bearings  upon  the 
nature  and  the  development  of  man's  moral  life  can  be 
understood  only  when  we  have  considered  in  detail  the  sig- 
nificance of  the  phrase  which  was  added  to  the  definition  of 
the  sphere  of  ethics  —  a  study  of  human  conduct  as  related 
to  a  rational  ideal. 

The  further  exposition  of  the  part  which  the  feeling  of 
obligation  plays  in  the  moral  development  of  man  requires 
that  the  working  of  other  faculties  in  his  equipment  for  the 


90  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

life  of  conduct  should  be  taken  into  the  account.  In  part  the 
origin,  nature,  and  cultivation  of  ethical  judgments  must  be 
discussed  before  we  can  understand  the  later  forms  of  this 
consciousness  of  oughtness.  But  two  or  three  classes  of 
familiar  phenomena  deserve  at  least  a  reference  in  this  con- 
nection. First,  it  may  readily  be  seen  that  vacillations  and 
uncertainties  of  this  form  of  ethical  feeling  are  inevitable. 
These  are  not  simply  due  to  its  obscuration  and  blunting  by 
the  so-called  selfish  emotions.  Doubt  about  the  rightfulness 
of  the  control  of  the  feeling  of  obligation  by  the  current  rules 
of  conduct  is  essential  to  a  higher  development  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  of  the  race.  But  such  doubt  inevitably  leads  to 
the  disturbance  of  the  feeling  and  to  its  possible  detachment 
from  its  old  associations.  While  this  feeling  trembles  in 
the  balance,  as  it  were,  between  the  old  and  the  new  point 
of  attachment  an  important  influence  is  being  exercised  upon 
the  entire  attitude  of  the  individual  toward  the  conception 
of  duty  and  toward  the  dutiful  life.  In  large  communities, 
and  over  continents  occupied  by  different  races  and  different 
constitutions  of  existing  society,  periods  of  "  illumination  " 
are  always  connected  with  unusual  disturbances  in  morals 
and  in  the  moral  consciousness.  This  was  true  of  the  epoch 
when  the  Sophists  became  prominent  in  Greece,  of  the 
Renaissance  in  the  Middle  Ages,  of  the  Avfklarung  in  Europe 
in  the  eighteenth  century ;  it  is  true  of  to-day  in  connection 
with  the  modern  discoveries  of  ethnology  and  with  the  appli- 
cation of  some  of  the  cruder  views  of  biological  evolution  to 
the  development  of  morality  in  the  human  race. 

And,  second,  the  place  of  the  feeling  of  obligation  in  the 
moral  life  explains,  in  part,  how  divergent  views  as  to  the 
nature  and  authority  of  so-called  "conscience"  may  arise. 
To  speak  of  a  conscience,  or  the  conscience  is  likely  to 
induce  misunderstanding  of  the  most  primary  data  of  psy- 
chological ethics.  Moral  consciousness  man  has ;  or,  rather, 
he  is  essentially  a  moral  consciousness.     But  in  this  moral 


THE  FEELING  OF  OBLIGATION  91 

nature  of  his  consciousness  are  found  involved  all  of  his  so- 
called  faculties,  or  powers,  in  so  far  as  they  have  reference 
to  the  production  and  the  criticism  of  conduct.  No  wonder, 
then,  that  those  theorists  who  appeal  solely  to  the  feeling  of 
obligation  fail  to  convince  others  who  take  their  appeal  to  the 
bar  of  an  enlightened  judgment.  And  just  as  little  wonder 
that  the  latter,  when  they  offend  the  feeling  of  obligation  by 
their  coolly  intellectual  judgments,  run  the  risk  of  being 
described  as  essentially  immoral  in  their  standards  of  judg- 
ment. Thus  fine  feeling  and  sound  judgment  in  matters  of 
conduct  may  seem  to  be  involved  in  a  perpetual  conflict. 

But,  third,  these  same  considerations  show  how  this  kind 
of  conflict  in  morals,  with  all  the  tragedy  to  which  these 
words  indubitably  bear  witness  is  the  fate  of  the  individual 
and  of  the  race,  — the  price  that  must  be  paid  for  all 
essential  progress  under  existing  social  conditions  toward 
the  realization  of  the  moral  ideal.  If  moral  judgment,  based 
on  grounds  that  lie  outside  itself  and  beyond  the  reach  of 
mere  feeling,  is  ever  to  be  framed,  then  feeling  and  judg- 
ment must  betimes  come  into  conflict.  But  since  the  rational 
man  feels  the  obligation  to  be  rational, — and,  sometimes, 
as  his  supremest  obligation,  —  therefore  the  feeling  of  obli- 
gation is  liable  to  be  divided  against  itself.  He  who  has 
not  judged  that  he  ought  not  to  do  that  which  he,  neverthe- 
less, still  feels  that  he  ought  to  do  has  probably  not  yet 
passed  beyond  the  earliest  stages  of  moral  development. 

And,  finally,  we  are  now  prepared  in  a  general  way  to  give 
an  opinion  upon  one  of  the  contentions  of  the  extreme 
evolutionary  school  in  ethics.  This  school  would  make  out 
that  all  which  concerns  the  feeling  of  obligation  is  relative, 
is  subject  to  evolution.  In  the  case  of  the  individual  man 
such  a  conclusion  plainly  is  not  true  to  the  facts  in  the  case. 
With  the  individual  the  most  primary  movings  of  an  "ought- 
consciousness  "  are  not  modifications  of  the  pleasure-pain 
feeling,  or  of  any  of  those  forms  of  emotional  excitement 


92  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

which  are  so  often  improperly  divided  into  egoistic  and 
altruistic.  On  the  other  hand,  the  most  primary  forms  of 
the  quasi-ethical  judgments  are  only  propositions  stating 
the  fact  of  the  arousement  of  this  feeling,  and  the  particular 
actions  to  which  this  feeling  makes  its  earliest  and  firmest 
attachments  are  explicable  by  reference  to  influences  of 
education  and  environment.  In  the  later  development  of 
the  Moral  Self,  the  feeling  of  obligation  becomes  modified 
and  changed  in  its  associations  by  the  changed  character  of 
the  same  influences,  as  these  influences  work  upon  all  the 
passions  and  affections,  and  upon  a  system  of  increasingly 
intelligent  judgments. 

Thus  do  man's  moral  convictions  form  themselves;  and 
they  always  have  the  twofold  aspect  in  which  the  feeling 
of  obligation  stands  to  his  voluntary  nature.  They  have  a 
passive  aspect;  they  are  a  consciousness  of  being  under  law. 
They  have  also  an  active  aspect;  they  are  an  emotional  ex- 
citement which  constitutes  a  call  to  volition.  The  feeling 
of  obligation  is  a  feeling  of  being  bound;  for  "the  ought" 
partakes,  in  a  measure,  of  the  nature  of  a  "must;"  it  is  also 
an  impulsive  feeling,  and  in  its  more  intense  forms  comes 
very  near  to  passing  over  from  emotional  impulse  into  an 
"I  will." 

What  is  true  in  the  small  sphere  is  probably  true  in  the 
large.  What  is  true  of  the  ought-consciousness  of  the  indi- 
vidual is,  so  far  as  we  can  discover,  true  of  the  place  which 
the  feeling  of  obligation  has  always  taken  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  moral  life  of  the  race. 


CHAPTER  YI 

OTHER  ETHICAL  FEELINGS 

The  preceding  discussion  of  the  feeling  of  obligation  has 
been  so  detailed  as  to  make  unnecessary  a  lengthy  treatment 
of  the  other  ethical  feelings.  Certain  changes  being  made, 
most  of  what  Has  been  already  said  with  reference  to  it  is 
also  applicable  to  them.  In  general  they  may  be  spoken  of 
as  the  feelings  of  approbation  and  disapprobation,  and  the 
feelings  of  merit  and  demerit  —  all  to  be  regarded  from  the 
distinctively  ethical  point  of  view.  But  these  affective  atti- 
tudes of  human  consciousness  toward  conduct  and  toward 
character,  when  analyzed,  appear  more  complex  than  the 
more  primitive  and  distinctively  ethical  feeling  of  oughtness. 

The  feeling  of  moral  approbation  may  be  described  as  that 
pleasant  satisfaction  which  the  morally  awakened  conscious- 
ness has  when  contemplating  a  piece  of  conduct  that  is  in 
accordance  with  the  feeling  of  obligation.  The  feeling  of 
disapprobation,  on  the  other  hand,  is  the  unpleasant  dis- 
satisfaction with  which  conduct  is  contemplated  that  violates 
the  feeling  of  obligation.  The  very  language  which  we  are 
obliged  to  use  in  every  attempt  at  describing  these  feelings 
suggests  some  of  the  more  important  differences  from,  as 
well  as  certain  likenesses  to,  the  early  emotional  stirrings 
of  the  "ought-consciousness."  Of  such  differences  I  shall 
now  briefly  call  attention  to  the  following  four. 

It  is  not  unimportant  to  notice  a  difference  in  the  ethical 
feelings  as  respects  their  temporal  relation  toward  the  deed. 
In  imagination,  at  least,  the  feeling  of  obligation  is  fitly 


94  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

excited  in  view  of  a  deed  that  is  about  to  be  done.  This 
feeling  looks  forward  to  the  future  conduct;  it  arises  on 
contemplation  of  conduct  that  is  still  to  be.  What  shall  I 
do,  or  refrain  from  doing  ?  is  the  inquiry  which  stirs  the 
feeling  of  "  I  ought "  or  "  I  ought-not. "  The  question  what 
ought  he  to  have  done  is  speculative;  a  problem  which,  for 
its  very  consideration  requires  an  act  of  imagination  setting 
the  Self  into  time  relations  before  the  deed  in  regard  to  which 
the  question  is  raised.  But  with  the  feelings  of  moral  appro- 
bation and  disapprobation  just  the  reverse  is  true.  These 
feelings  are  always  and  necessarily  aroused  in  view  of  con- 
duct regarded  as  already  done.  The  deed  may,  in  fact,  only 
be  imagined  as  done,  may  be  contemplated  and  passed  upon 
with  approbation  or  disapprobation  when  its  transaction  is  a 
purely  subjective  affair.  But  even  in  all  such  cases  the  tem- 
poral relation  of  the  different  members  in  the  conscious 
series  remains  unaltered.  The  feeling  of  obligation  looks 
forward ;  the  feelings  of  moral  approbation  and  disapproba- 
tion look  backward.  Of  course,  it  must  be  remembered  that 
all  one's  own  passions  and  affections  are,  in  so  far  as  they 
are  conceived  of  as  controlled  by  the  self,  regarded  as  actions 
or  deeds.  And  thus  one  may  come  to  look  upon  their  con- 
tinued, even  momentary  indulgence  or  prompt  repression, 
with  the  feeling  of  obligation;  while  men  contemplate  the 
just  past  indulgence  or  repression  of  these  same  passions  and 
affections  with  the  feeling  of  approbation  (or  its  opposite). 

The  characteristic  difference  just  mentioned  is  almost 
identical  with  another,  when  the  whole  subject  is  considered 
from  a  slightly  changed  point  of  view.  To  employ  language, 
the  fuller  import  of  which  requires  further  analysis,  it  may  be 
said  that  the  feeling  of  obligation  constitutes  a  ''motive  "  for 
the  will.  The  emotion  partakes  of  the  nature  of  those  states 
of  consciousness  which  are  regarded  as  impelling  and  attract- 
ing toward,  or  repelling  and  deterring  from,  certain  actions, 
and  the  choices  on  which  the  actions  depend ;  it  is  essentially 


OTHEK  ETHICAL  FEELINGS  95 

a  demand  to  do  something  —  a  summons  issued  to  the  volun- 
tary nature.  But  the  feelings  of  approbation  and  of  disap- 
probation are  of  a  more  contemplative  character ;  they  more 
nearly  resemble  the  aesthetical  stirrings  with  which  an  artis- 
tically good  or  bad  piece  of  work  is  regarded.  In  either  case, 
of  course,  one  may  wish  to  punish  or  to  reward  the  doer  of 
the  work.  But  this  wish  is  an  impulse  to  another  piece  of 
conduct  which  in  its  turn  will  have  to  be  contemplated,  when 
it  is  finished,  with  feelings  of  approval  or  of  disapproval. 

A  third  difference  between  the  two  kinds  of  ethical  feeling 
will  be  found  important  when  we  come  to  consider  the  nature, 
the  formation,  and  the  development  of  the  various  virtues 
and  vices.  The  whole  complex  mental  condition,  especially 
as  determined  by  the  predominance,  or  even  by  the  presence, 
of  these  feelings  is  different.  Above  all  is  this  true  of  the 
relations  which  they  both  sustain  to  our  pleasures  and  our 
pains.  The  feeling  of  obligation  to  do,  when  strongest  and 
worthiest  of  a  high  place  in  the  scale  of  ethical  values,  may 
be  most  painful ;  and  the  same  thing  is  true  of  the  feeling 
of  obligation  when  it  corresponds  to  the  judgment,  "  I  ought 
not."  Whereas,  although  one  may  fitly  speak  of  pleasant 
duties,  the  increment  of  pleasure  which  comes  from  the 
feeling  of  obligation  to  indulge  the  inclinations  or  to  perform 
the  actions  which  constitute  these  so-called  "pleasant 
duties,"  is  ordinarily  very  small.  But  a  certain  amount  of 
pleasure  is  an  essential  element  —  or,  rather,  it  is  the  char- 
acteristic and  universal  tone  —  of  the  feeling  of  approbation; 
and  a  certain  amount  of  pain  naturally  and  necessarily  tinges 
the  feeling  of  moral  disapprobation.  Both  the  pleasure  and 
the  pain  are  however,  ordinarily  of  a  predominatingly  mild 
and  rather  ineffective  character.  And  if  either  of  them 
becomes  intense,  it  is  almost  certain  to  be  the  pain. 

It  is  customary  on  the  part  of  all  the  more  persuasive  of 
the  hedonistic  theories  to  emphasize  the  value  of  those  pleas- 
ures and  pains  which  go  with  the  approving  or  the  disapprov- 


96  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

ing   of    conscience,    by   calling  them   "higher,"    "nobler," 
"worthier"  of  a  rational  being,  etc.     The   hedging   which 
such  a  course  to  the  argument  involves  will  be  tracked  out 
later.     But  this  fact  of  human  experience  may  as  well  be 
noted  and  emphasized  at  once.     The  feeling  of  obligation  is 
for  the  most  part,  both  in  its  positive  and  in  its  negative 
form  (both  as  the  feeling,   "I  ought,"  and   the  feeling,   "I 
ought  not"),  far  more  productive  of  pain  than  of  pleasure. 
And   most  of  the   positive   pleasures  which  the  individual 
secures  come  from  actions  that  either  violate  this  feeling  or 
give  scanty  recognition  to  it.     On  the  contrary,  the  pleasures 
which  come  from  the  feeling  of  strictly  moral  approbation 
are,    as   pleasures,    comparatively   weak   and   ineffective   as 
motives  to  right  conduct,  while  the  pains  that  are  an  essen- 
tial  part  of  the  emotional   excitement   which   wrong-doing 
occasions  are  relatively  strong;  and,  in  the  case  of  a  morally 
awakened    consciousness,    they   may   become   very   intense. 
Now  if  all  the  pleasures  of  the  approving  consciences  of  all 
mankind  were,  quoad  pleasures,  to  be  placed  in  the  scale  with 
the  pains  which  all  mankind  have  suffered  both  in  doing  the 
right  and   in   disapproving  the   wrong,  there  can  be  little 
doubt   which  way  that   scale   would   turn.     In  a  word,  the 
sufferings  of  humanity  far  exceed  its  pleasures  as  immediate 
results  or  accompaniments  of  obedience  to  the  moral  law. 

The  fourth  class  of  differences  which  characterize  the 
feeling  of  obligation  and  the  feeling  of  moral  approbation 
(or  its  opposite)  is  still  more  distinctive.  Or  —  better  said, 
perhaps  —  there  are  no  feelings  of  approbation  and  disappro- 
bation which,  either  as  respects  their  origin  or  their  char- 
acter, are  quite  distinctively  and  uniquely  ethical.  This 
fundamental  fact  was  indicated  when  ethics  was  called,  even 
in  an  only  partially  satisfactory  way,  the  scientific  study  of 
that  which  "ought  to  be"  in  conduct  and  in  character. 
Probably  no  one  would  think  of  defining  the  subject-matter 
of  ethics  as  though  it  were  wholly,  or  chiefly,  concerned  with 


OTHER  ETHICAL  FEELINGS  97 

that  pleasant  satisfaction  and  unpleasant  dissatisfaction 
which  men  feel  in  contemplating  different  kinds  of  conduct. 
At  any  rate,  the  feelings  of  approbation  and  disapprobation 
with  which  men  do  actually  regard  conduct  and  character 
are,  considered  barely  as  modes  of  affective  consciousness, 
very  closely  allied  to  certain  non-moral  forms  of  feeling. 
Indeed,  they  are  so  closely  allied  to  corresponding  aesthetical 
feelings  as  to  make  difficult  or  impossible  any  distinction 
which  has  a  sufficient  permanent  basis  in  psychological 
analysis.  Here'  the  difference  between  the  aesthetical  and 
the  ethical  is  much  more  a  difference  in  the  character  of  the 
objects,  and  in  the  results  which  flow  from  this  difference 
in  objects,  than  a  difference  in  the  essential  character  of  the 
feelings  themselves. 

The  distinction  just  drawn  requires  further  illustration. 
There  are  certain  qualities  of  all  beings,  whether  of  things 
and  animals  in  the  system  of  so-called  nature  or  of  men  in 
the  existing  social  system,  which  are  naturally  regarded 
with  feelings  of  approval;  certain  other  qualities,  with 
feelings  of  disapproval.  Exhibitions  of  power  on  a  large 
scale,  or  of  skill  in  the  adaptation  of  means  to  ends,  or  of 
judgment  and  good  taste  in  arranging  colors  and  forms, 
when  these  exhibitions  are  not  regarded  as  in  any  way 
inimicable  to  their  interests,  are  met  by  men  everywhere 
with  feelings  of  pleasant  satisfaction.  This  is  but  the 
natural  attitude  of  human  consciousness  toward  the  various 
kinds  of  goods.  It  is  not  necessary  at  present  to  inquire 
whether  the  approval  is  the  source  of  the  pleasure,  or  is  only 
its  effect  or  its  accompaniment.  It  may,  in  fact,  on  various 
occasions  stand  in  either  one  of  these  three  relations  to  the 
happiness  of  the  conscious  soul.  In  all  cases,  approbation  is 
the  characteristic  human  way  of  greeting  with  appropriate 
feeling  that  which  the  mind  apprehends  as  an  instrumental  or 
a  final  good.  For  example,  the  savage  approves  of  the  bow 
or  the  war-club  or  the  spear  that  has  done  him  good  service, 

7 


98  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

or  that  is  beautifully  decorated.  The  worshipper  of  the  stars 
or  of  the  sacred  fire  regards  the  object  of  his  adoration  with  a 
similar  feeling.  The  traveller  stands  "  like-minded  "  before 
the  Taj  Mahal  or  the  Pyramid  of  Cheops ;  or  he  looks  off  from 
Observation  Hill  at  Darjeeling  upon  Kinchinjanga  and  its 
attendant  members  of  the  Himalayas  with  emotions  of 
wonder  and  admiration  that  strive  to  become  an  adequate 
expression  of  what  is  due  to  those  qualities  of  grandeur  in 
beauty  which  such  objects  seem  to  possess.  But  now  let  the 
same  savage  contemplate  his  chief,  or  himself,  using  bow,  or 
club,  or  spear,  in  deeds  of  prowess ;  and  his  feeling  toward 
the  author  of  such  worthy  conduct  remains,  as  feeling, 
essentially  unchanged.  The  same  thing  is  true  when  the 
traveller  remembers  the  builder  of  the  colossal  structure  of 
the  pyramid,  or  the  architect  of  this  gem  of  beauty,  the  Taj 
Mahal;  or  even  when  he  regards  the  Infinite  One  as  the 
creator  of  the  loftiest  mountains  of  the  world.  In  each  case 
the  approbation  is  an  emotion  of  pleasant  satisfaction  accom- 
panying the  contemplation  of  that  which  is  regarded  as  a 
species  of  good. 

When,  however,  any  object  is  definitively  contemplated  as 
the  product  of  some  conscious  agent,  as  a  piece  of  his  con- 
duct, so  to  say,  then  a  change  in  the  attitude  of  the  contem- 
plating mind  occurs ;  but  it  is  rather  a  change  in  the  point 
of  attachment  for  the  feeling  of  approbation  than  a  change  in 
the  character  of  the  feeling  itself.  That  is  to  say,  the  con- 
duct is  met  with  the  feeling  of  a  pleasant  satisfaction  on 
account  of  its  qualities  as  good  conduct ;  and  the  responsible 
agent  is  approbated  —  at  least  so  far  as  this  particular  action 
is  concerned  —  as  a  good  man. 

Something  further  is  needed  in  order  to  connect  as  strictly 
as  possible  the  feeling  of  approbation  with  the  most  distinc- 
tively ethical  elements  of  consciousness.  Suppose  now  that 
the  motives  which  led  to  the  observed  conduct  become  fully 
known;  and,  as  well,  the  kind  of  real  character  which  the 


OTHER  ETHICAL  FEELINGS  99 

conduct  evinced.  Suppose  that  this  deed  which  seemed  so 
noble  was  really  done  from  base  motives.  It  was  a  seeming 
good  which  originated  in  hypocrisy,  cowardice,  avarice,  or 
malicious  hatred.  Or  it  was  a  piece  of  splendid  impru- 
dence, rash  generosity,  mistaken  kindness.  Then  we  shall 
see  the  emotional  stirrings  of  the  contemplative  soul  become 
yet  more  complex.  A  curious  struggle  between  feelings  of 
approbation  and  feelings  of  disapprobation  now  emerges  in 
consciousness.  The  deed  is  approved,  the  motive  disap- 
proved. Or  deed  and  motive  are  both  approved,  but  only  in 
a  qualified  or  faint-hearted  way.  The  man  did  well  and 
meant  well,  and  yet  —  he  should  have  been  less  hasty,  more 
deliberate  and  wise  about  probable  consequences.  Suppose, 
however,  that  this  is  one  of  those  rare  and  splendid  cases 
where,  in  obedience  to  the  feeling  of  obligation  but  at  cost  of 
immense  self-sacrifice,  with  deliberate  judgment  and  with  a 
noble  scorn  of  one's  own  suffering,  with  a  wise  use  of  means 
in  the  interests  of  a  worthy  end,  and  with  the  worthiest  ex- 
hibition of  economically  directed  strength,  the  deed  was  both 
chosen  and  executed;  then,  however  our  sensitive  natures 
shrink  with  sympathetic  pain,  our  whole  aesthetical  and 
ethical  being  approves.  How  truly  splendid,  how  perfectly 
excellent  a  piece  of  conduct  it  was !  Why  ?  Because  it  pre- 
sents to  the  moral  consciousness  a  picture  of  the  highest  kind 
of  activity  belonging  to  an  ideal  Self.  And  this  realization 
of  the  moral  ideal  in  the  object  gives  its  most  distinctively 
moral  character  to  the  approving  feelings  with  which  our 
consciousness  greets  the  object. 

Keeping  these  differences  in  mind,  what  was  said  in  treat- 
ing of  the  nature,  origin,  and  development  of  the  moral  life 
as  dependent  upon  the  feeling  of  obligation  may  be  briefly 
recalled,  but  need  not  be  repeated  in  detail.  These  feelings 
of  approbation  and  of  disapprobation  with  which  men  every- 
where, and  in  all  stages  of  development,  regard  their  own  and 
others'  conduct,  must  be  assumed  as  natural  for  every  indi- 


100  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

vidual.  The  origin  of  these  feelings  for  the  race  is  lost  in 
obscurity ;  but  it  may  be  said  that  men  began  to  approve  and 
to  disapprove  morally,  whenever  they  began  to  be  moral,  — 
i.  e.,  whenever  they  began  to  regard  actions  and  states  of 
consciousness  leading  to  action  from  the  point  of  view  held 
by  the  feelings  and  judgments  of  obligation.  All  that  is 
deemed  good  is  approved,  —  the  happifying,  the  beautifying, 
the  morally  good.  But  the  man  who  is  morally  approbated 
is  the  man  who  does  what  ought  to  be  done. 

The  same  distinctive  and  unique  character  which  belongs 
to  the  feeling  of  obligation  can,  therefore,  scarcely  be  claimed 
for  that  feeling  of  pleasant  satisfaction  with  which  all  men 
greet  what  is  considered  as  morally  worthy  in  conduct  or  in 
character.  For  —  as  I  have  already  said  —  ethical  approba- 
tion is  so  closely  akin  to  the  admiration  with  which  our 
aesthetical  susceptibilities  regard  whatever  is  sublime  and 
beautiful  that  it  is  difficult  or  impossible  always  to  distin- 
guish between  the  two.  Full  and  unhesitating  admiration  is 
rendered  to  the  hero  who  does  the  good  deed  in  a  strong  and 
beautiful  way.  And  even  he  who,  like  Milton's  Satan,  does 
the  morally  wrong  deed,  in  a  manner  that  seems  strong  and 
beautiful,  is  the  object  of  admiration.  Nor  can  this  admira- 
tion be  said  to  be  entirely  won-moral  in  its  character.  For 
strength  and  beauty  in  the  execution  of  one's  purpose  are, 
of  necessity,  considered  as  significant  of  that  strenuous  will 
and  fine  discerning  judgment  which  are  distinctive  and  highly 
important  qualifications  of  the  ideal  Self.  And  this  ideal 
Self  is  the  Ideal  of  ethics,  —  the  standard  by  which  moral 
consciousness  measures  the  worth  of  conduct  and  the  right 
to  approval  which  good  conduct  possesses.  The  uncultured 
consciousness  is  not  wholly  wrong  when  it  looks  with  appro- 
bation upon  the  behavior  exploited  in  melodrama,  or  nar- 
rated in  the  biography  of  dashing  rogues,  like  Dick  Turpin 
or  Sixteen-string  Jack. 

The  development  of  the  feelings  of  ethical  approbation  or 


OTHER  ETHICAL  FEELINGS  101 

disapprobation  is  dependent  upon  the  relations  which  are 
established  between  these  feelings  and  the  ideas  and  judg- 
ments that  concern  conduct  and  character.  Thus  the  answer 
to  the  question,  Why  are  particular  forms  of  conduct  and 
types  of  character  approved,  and  others  disapproved  ?  like 
the  similar  question  in  art,  can  be  understood  only  as  the 
result  of  a  detailed  historical  investigation.  Such  an  inves- 
tigation, when  carried  on  in  a  comprehensive  way,  reveals 
the  enormous  complexity  of  influences  which  surround  and 
shape  the  unfolding  of  the  moral  consciousness  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  of  the  race.  Like  all  other  feelings  these  ethical 
emotions  may  vary  in  intensity  and  in  that  quality  called 
"refinement"  which  is,  after  all,  rather  a  change  in  the 
intellectual  and  ideal  aspect  of  moral  consciousness  regarded 
as  guiding  the  restraining  control  of  will.  Here,  as  every- 
where, the  principle  of  habit  becomes  exceedingly  important. 

Those  feelings  which  I  have  ventured  to  call  ethical  merit 
and  demerit  are  yet  more  complex,  —  less  distinctively  and 
uniquely  primitive  and  original.  This  will  appear  if  we 
consider  all  that  is  involved  in  Professor  Bowne's  ^  excellent 
definition  of  merit  as  "  the  desert  of  moral  approval  and  the 
right  to  be  rewarded  accordingly."  This  definition  must  be 
interpreted  as  involving  at  least  the  following  factors: 
(1)  A  feeling  of  obligation  to  approve  (I  ought  to  he  morally 
approbated) ;  (2)  a  feeling  of  right  to  assert  a  claim  (I  am 
entitled  to  some  form  of  the  good,  which  ovght  to  come  to 
me) ;  (3)  a  vague  feeling  of  another's  duty,  as  it  were  (for 
another  than  I  ought  to  treat  me  "  accordingly  "  —  by  bring- 
ing me  some  reward). 

It  is  plain  that  such  feelings  as  those  just  analyzed  imply 
much  more  than  is  revealed  at  once  even  to  the  most  pene- 
trating and  thorough  analysis.  Indeed,  it  may  be  claimed 
not  inaptly  that  they  imply  a  somewhat  firm  grasp  of 
conviction  —  however  vague  and  incoherent  the  accompany- 

1  The  Principles  of  Ethics,  p.  171. 


102  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

ing  ideas  and  judgments  may  be  —  upon  the  existence  of  an 
extended  social  system  which  is  at  least  partially  conducted 
in  accordance  with  moral  principles.  It  is,  indeed,  true 
that  the  higher  one's  culture  in  essential  morality  grows,  the 
less  does  one  care  for,  or  work  for,  the  reward  of  merit. 
And  the  typically  good  man  is  he  who  is  good,  "  not  for  the 
sake  of  gaining  heaven  or  of  escaping  hell."  Still  further, 
he  who  encourages  within  himself  the  feeling  of  a  right  to 
assert  the  claim  of  merit  may  easily  dull  the  fine  edge  of  his 
own  feeling  of  moral  approbation,  and  dim  the  lustre  of  the 
moral  quality  of  his  deed.  There  is  another  side  to  all  this, 
however  —  most  true,  most  significant.  The  good  man  feels 
that  he  ought  to  approve  the  virtues  of  others  and  to  assist, 
so  far  as  in  him  lies,  in  seeing  to  it  that  virtue  is  rewarded 
and  vice  disapproved  and  punished.  He  is  also  filled  with 
the  conviction  that  no  society  is  as  yet  properly  constructed 
so  long  as  the  goods  of  life  are  distributed  by  it  with  scanty 
regard  for  the  merit  or  demerit  of  its  own  individual  mem- 
bers. The  more  one  insists  upon  the  importance  of  right- 
eousness in  social  development,  the  more  important  becomes 
the  practical  effectiveness  of  the  feelings  designated  by  the 
words  merit  and  demerit. 

If  we  study  the  historical  evolution  of  customs,  laws,  and 
the  opinions  and  codes  that  embody  the  current  feelings  and 
judgments  of  an  ethical  kind,  the  strength  and  tenacity  of 
the  same  conviction  among  mankind  are  still  more  plainly 
evinced.  The  man  who  has  done  another  "a  good  turn,"  or 
has  labored,  suffered,  and  achieved,  in  the  interests  of  the 
tribe  or  of  the  nation,  instinctively  feels  that  some  reward 
is  of  his  right  and  is  bounden  duty  on  the  part  of  his  fellows. 

Even 

"  Thanks  to  men 
Of  noble  minds  is  honorable  meed." 

On  the  other  hand,  total  and  cold  indifference,  or  an  attitude 
of  haughty  scorn,  toward  the  moral  approval  of  others  is 


OTHER  ETHICAL  FEELINGS  103 

in  itself  discordant  with  the  moral  Ideal;  while  all  the 
strongest  forces  that  bind  and  move  men  together  —  such  as 
imitation,  tribal  sympathy,  community  of  interests,  yearning 
for  social'*  connections  and  desire  for  this  very  thing,  the 
moral  esteem  of  one's  fellows  —  are  pledged  to  operate 
against  the  total  suppression  of  the  feelings  of  merit  and 
demerit.  It  is,  indeed,  doubtful  whether  indifference  to  all 
reward  for  right  conduct  is  not  uniformly  more  or  less 
feigned,  and  the  scorn  for  the  approbation  of  other  moral 
beings,  as  a  rule,  only  another  and  more  subtle  way  of 
asserting  the  same  sense,  when  we  have  done  right,  of  our 
"right  to  be  treated  accordingly."  Under  the  influence  of 
this  feeling  men  turn  from  the  jury  at  hand  to  the  jury 
more  remote,  from  the  court  at  present  sitting  to  the  court 
of  the  future,  from  the  human  judgment  to  the  judgment 
of  the  invisible  powers,  from  the  verdict  of  the  race  even 
to  the  infallible  verdict  of  God.  One  of  the  most  curious 
instances  of  the  conviction  that  he  who  has  done  what 
he  ought  has  acquired  "the  desert  of  moral  approval  and 
the  right  to  be  rewarded  accordingly,"  coupled  with  a  yet 
more  curious  contradiction  of  involved  beliefs,  was  given 
years  ago  by  Mr.  Spencer  in  his  "First  Principles,"  ^  when, 
reflecting  upon  the  certainty  that  he  would  be  misunder- 
stood in  his  effort  to  reconcile  science  and  religion,  he 
comforted  and  justified  himself  as  follows :  "  Whoever  hesi- 
tates to  utter  that  which  he  thinks  the  highest  truth,  lest 
he  should  be  too  much  in  advance  of  the  time,  may  reassure 
himself  by  looking  at  his  acts  from  an  impersonal  point  of 
view.  .  .  .  He,  like  every  other  man  may  properly  consider 
himself  as  one  of  the  myriad  agencies  through  whom  works 
the  Unknown  Cause ;  and  when  the  Unknown  Cause  produces 
in  him  a  certain  belief,  he  is  thereby  authorized  to  profess 
and  act  out  that  belief. " 

How  this   natural   and   well-nigh  universal   readiness  to 

1  Second  edition,  p.  123. 


104  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

extend  so  far  our  confidence  in  the  implications  of  the  feel- 
ings of  merit  and  demerit  points  toward  a  moral  system  of 
the  universe,  and  toward  the  continuance  beyond  the  visible 
into  the  invisible,  and  beyond  the  present  life  into  the  future 
life,  of  a  system  of  rewards  and  punishments,  it  belongs  to 
the  later  extensions  of  ethical  theory,  or  to  the  philosophy 
of  religion,  to  disclose.  It  is  perfectly  evident  at  this  point, 
however,  that  a  considerable  development  of  ideas  and 
judgments  of  the  social  order  is  indispensable  in  giving  an 
account  to  ourselves  of  even  the  cruder  and  lower  forms  of 
such  ethical  feelings  as  these. 

The  pleasant  satisfaction  which  the  feeling  of  merit 
affords,  when  its  right  is  satisfied,  is  closely  related  to  the 
mild  pleasure  of  a  gratified  pride ;  the  dissatisfaction  follow- 
ing the  failure  to  be  approbated  by  others,  and  "  to  be  treated 
accordingly,"  is  much  more  than  an  equivalent  in  its  produc- 
tivity of  pain.  Here  again  the  path  along  which  duty  leads, 
as  marked  out  by  the  ethical  feelings,  is  much  less  strewn 
with  roses  than  with  thorns.  He  who  thinks  to  pay  himself 
for  doing  what  he  ought  in  coin  of  merit  will  almost  surely 
fail  in  the  business.  Indeed,  one  of  those  curious  anomalies 
with  which  ethical  study  is  full,  is  encountered  here.  It 
is  as  a  rule,  the  meanest  and  least  moral  men  who  have  the 
most  lively  satisfactions  from  the  sense  of  their  own  merit, 
and  who  most  intensely  feel  their  right  to  a  reward,  for  the 
occasional  small,  meritorious  services  they  render  their 
fellowmen. 

The  feeling  of  demerit  is  doubtless  to  a  certain  extent  a 
natural  means  of  punishing  past  misdeeds  and  a  motive  to 
refrain  from  misdoing  in  the  future.  Occasionally  this 
feeling  acquires  that  sharp  and  pungent  character  which  the 
word  "remorse  "  is  meant  to  signalize.  In  this  form  it  may 
—  but  only  rarely  —  give  an  adequate  reason  for  the  saying 
that  the  evil-doing,  the  sin,  brings  in  the  form  of  self-repro- 
bation its  own  self-punishment.     But  I  am  persuaded  that 


OTHER  ETHICAL  FEELINGS  105 

the  intensity  of  this  feeling,  and  the  actual  potency  of  its 
influence,  are  usually  greatly  exaggerated  by  the  orthodox 
systems  of  ethics.  The  avenging  furies,  the  demon  of  the 
remorseful  conscience,  the  Erinnys,  do  indeed,  appear  in 
real  life.  It  is  only  when  they  are  the  emissaries  of  those 
dre'ad,  mysterious  powers  to  which  religious  belief  commits 
men,  that  they  are  potent  for  good  through  their  appeal  to 
the  feeling  of  demerit.  For  the  most  part,  otherwise,  they 
are  the  relatively  impotent  constructs  of  the  imagination  of 
the  poet  or  of  the  priest. 

These  ethical  feelings,  in  the  course  of  attachments  to 
certain  judgments,  detachments,  and  reattachments,  which 
they  follow  are  subject  to  the  same  conditions  which  have 
already  been  sufficiently  described.  Indeed,  the  entire 
development  of  the  moral  life  requires  us  to  understand  how 
it  is  that  ethical  judgments  arise,  and  become  changed  and 
modified  so  as  to  give  rise  in  the  mind  of  the  individual  and 
in  the  social  structure  to  a  system  of  moral  principles; 
and  thus  to  awaken  the  conception  of  a  moral  law  and  of  an 
inalienable  and  unalterable  nature  for  the  Right.  But  I 
cannot  proceed  further  in  the  effort  to  describe  and  explain 
the  working  of  the  emotional  elements  in  moral  conscious- 
ness, before  taking  into  account  the  more  distinctively  intel- 
lectual and  voluntary  endowment  of  the  moral  life. 


CHAPTER  YII 

ETHICAL  JUDGMENT 

Since  the  time  of  Aristotle  the  relation  in  which  man's 
intellectual  equipment  stands  to  his  moral  life  has  been  quite 
customarily  misunderstood  by  writers  upon  the  philosophy 
of  conduct.  This  great  analyst  of  psychical  states  closes  the 
first  Book  of  the  Nicomachean  Ethics  with  a  division  of 
human  "  excellences "  into  the  "  intellectual "  and  the 
"moral;"  "when  we  are  speaking  of  a  man's  moral  character 
{irepl  Tov  ^^ou?),"  he  says,  "we  do  not  say  that  he  is  wise  or 
intelligent,  but  that  he  is  gentle  or  temperate."  In  this,  as 
one  of  his  most  recent  commentators  ^  declares,  "Aristotle 
is  founding  the  distinction  between  the  Intellectual  and  the 
Moral  which  has  lasted  ever  since."  The  same  division  is 
justified  at  the  beginning  of  the  second  Book  by  several 
arguments  which  may,  however,  all  be  summarized  as  fol- 
lows :  (1)  the  intellectual  excellences  are  implanted  in  us  by 
nature,  the  moral  result  from  training  and  habit;  (2)  and, 
therefore,  the  latter  alone  stand  in  such  a  relation  to  the 
voluntary  Self  as  that  they  are  attributable  to  it  and  can 
properly  be  praised  or  blamed   and   rewarded  or  punished. 

No  such  distinction  as  that  advanced  by  Aristotle,  although 
it  "  has  lasted  ever  since,"  can  justify  itself  before  the 
analysis  of  a  thorough  and  consistent  psychological  ethics. 
The  "intellectual  excellences  "  —  to  continue  the  use  of  this 
phrase  —  are  no  more  and  no  less  natural  than  are  those 
feelings  and  passions  which  constitute  the  "  raw  material " 

1  Sir  A.  Grant,  The  Ethics  of  Aristotle,  I,  note  to  p.  476  f. 


ETHICAL  JUDGMENT  107 

of  the  "  moral  virtues ;  "  and  the  former  are  as  much  in  need 
of  training  under  the  habit  of  right  choice  as  are  the  latter, 
in  order  that  the  proper  rules  of  conduct  may  be  observed 
and  the  ideal  of  Selfhood  progressively  realized.  This  is 
implied  by  Aristotle's  entire  doctrine  of  moderation,  or  the 
observance  of  the  "  mean, "  as  entering  into  the  very  essence 
of  every  moral  virtue.  But  it  is  especially  important  at  the 
point  now  reached  in  our  study  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct 
to  insist  that  only  rational  beings  can  be  moral,  and  that  the 
degree  of  rationality  attained  or  attainable  depends  upon 
both  the  inherited  intellectual  endowment  and  the  voluntary 
training  of  the  intellectual  powers.  So  obvious  is  this  truth 
with  reference  to  that  task  which  morality  sets  before  the 
human  imagination  whenever  it  is  necessary  to  construct  any 
kind  of  an  Ideal,  that  nothing  need  be  added  to  what  has 
already  been  said  upon  this  subject  (see  p.  64  f.).  And  the 
larger  part  of  what  will  subsequently  appear  true  in  the  dis- 
cussion of  the  Nature  of  the  Right  and  of  the  Ultimate 
Moral  Ideal  will  further  illustrate  and  enforce  this  claim. 
In  order  to  understand  the  nature  of  ethical  judgment,  how- 
ever, there  are  three  respects  in  which  man's  rationality  far 
surpasses  the  intellectual  possibilities  of  the  lower  animals, 
that  demand  a  more  particular  consideration  at  this  point. 
These  are  his  development  of  (1)  Time-consciousness,  of  (2) 
Self-consciousness,  and  (3)  his  application  of  the  Causal 
Principle  to  the  synthetic  construction  of  experience. 

A  development  of  the  consciousness  of  Time  is  a  necessary 
part  of  man's  equipment  for  the  moral  life.  If  the  same 
sort  of  a  continual  flux  of  unorganized  sensations,  or  the 
same  shifting  mechanism  of  fused  and  associated  memory- 
images,  which  marks  the  limits  of  the  animal's  consciousness 
of  time,  were  also  all  that  man  could  attain,  then  the  life  of 
conduct  and  morality  would  be  impossible  for  him.  Indeed, 
such  a  succession  of  states  cannot  be  said  in  themselves  to 
form  even  the  basis  for  an  inchoate  and  undeveloped  time- 


108  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

consciousness.  But  man's  recognitive  memory  is  something 
different  from  this.  As  a  developed  faculty  it  brings  into 
consciousness,  in  a  way  to  influence  the  conduct  of  the  pres- 
ent moment,  a  more  remote  and  a  more  orderly  past  than  is 
possible  for  the  animal,  —  a  past  that  is  regarded  as  a  real 
past  in  its  relations  to  the  conscious  present.  Undoubtedly, 
such  a  rational  cognition  of  the  past  is  a  matter  of  varying 
degrees  even  among  men  of  the  same  period;  probably,  if 
not  undoubtedly  also,  it  is  a  form  of  consciousness  which 
has  been  rising  in  clearness  and  moral  value  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  race.  It  is,  at  least  in  part,  for  this  reason  that 
reward  or  punishment,  praise  or  blame,  should  follow 
quickly  upon  the  good  or  bad  deed  in  the  case  of  children 
and  savages ;  while  they  are  more  fitly  and  effectively  delib- 
erate and  deferred  in  the  case  of  civilized  adults.  So  also, 
where  the  passions  are  hot  and  uncontrolled,  and  where 
memories  are  short-lived  and  speedily  grow  faint,  the  dis- 
tinctively ethical  feelings  will  not  bear  to  wait  long  for  their 
satisfaction.  In  the  case  of  the  developed  man  the  long 
stretches  of  time  over  which  extend  the  feelings  of  merit  or 
remorse,  and  the  determination  to  reward  or  punish,  are 
proof  of  his  superior  intellectual  equipment  for  the  moral  life. 
By  imagination,  acting  under  the  category  of  time,  man 
predicts  and  anticipates  the  consequences  of  conduct,  and 
its  due  rewards.  It  is  a  most  astonishing  mark  of  his  intel- 
lectual excellence  that  he  consciously  directs  his  behavior 
with  reference  to  that  which  is  remotely  situated  in  time. 
Thus  he  fears  punishment  from  the  descendants  of  the  one 
he  has  injured,  and  he  understands  in  some  dim  way  the 
truth  of  Schiller's  couplet : 

"  This  is  the  very  curse  of  evil  deed, 
That  of  new  evil  it  becomes  the  seed." 

It  is  not  the  cultivated  German  poet  alone  who  can  reason 
thus.     "  One  event  is  the  son  of  another  and  we  must  never 


ETHICAL  JUDGMENT  109 

forget  the  parentage,"  said  the  Bechuana  chief  to  Casalis, 
the  African  missionary ;  ^  and  in  saying  this  he  showed  how- 
far  beyond  all  merely  animal  development  is  the  moral 
endowment  of  human  savages.  Human  imagination  creates 
a  future  Tartarus  and  Elysium ;  it  peoples  them  with  gods 
whose  attitude  toward  human  conduct  will  endure  relatively 
unchanged  after  men  have  forgotten  their  own  past.  It 
ministers  to  the  belief  in  an  eternity  of  consequences  as 
flowing  from  what  is  done  in  the  conscious  present  —  a 
doctrine  of  Karma,  an  everlasting  heaven  and  hell.  But  to 
punish  or  to  reward,  even  five  and  ten  years  after  the  deed, 
the  faulty  or  the  good  work  of  the  draught-horse  or  of  the 
hunting-dog,  would  be  neither  wise  policy  nor  commendable 
morals;  for  the  animal  could  neither  perform  the  act  of 
imagination  necessary  to  anticipate  the  postponed  punish- 
ment or  reward,  nor,  when  the  pain  or  pleasure  came,  con- 
nect it  by  an  act  of  memory  with  something  done  in  the 
remote  past  as  its  occasion  or  cause.  It  is  man's  relatively 
high  development  of  time-consciousness  which  imparts  the 
needed  continuity  to  morality  and  which  makes  possible  a 
truly  moral  development  —  the  life  of  conduct  progressively 
approaching  to,  or  withdrawing  from,  the  Ideal. 

In  what  has  just  been  said  the  development  of  Self- 
consciousness  as  a  necessary  postulate  of  ethical  development 
is  also  implied. 2  It  is  to  the  moral  Self  that  the  feeling  of 
obligation  attaches ;  it  is  from  the  inmost  selfhood  that  the 
feelings  of  approbation  and  disapprobation  seem  to  spring. 
Whose  is  the  merit  or  the  demerit  of  conduct,  and  whose 
"the  right  to  be  treated  accordingly?"  Undoubtedly,  our 
answer  to  every  such  question  must  always  involve  some  con- 
ception of  the  meaning  properly  belonging  to  the  word  "  Self. " 
But  this  very  conception  is  itself  a  subject  of  development, 

1  See  Tylor,  Primitiye  Culture,  I,  p.  4. 

^  On  the  development  of  Time-consciousness  and  Self-consciousness,  see  the 
following  works  of  the  author :  "  Psychology,  Descriptive  and  Explanatory," 
p.  495  f.  and  "  Philosophy  of  Knowledge,"  p.  193  f. 


110  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

having  a  markedly  different  content  and  a  largely  variable 
wealth  of  meaning,  as  it  is  formed  by  different  individual 
intellects  and  by  the  reciprocal  intellectual  efforts  of  different 
communities  of  individuals  in  different  periods  and  under 
different  circumstances,  in  the  life  of  the  race.  Thus  the 
offending  member  of  the  child's  bodily  self  is  made  to  suffer 
for  the  vice  or  fault  of  the  soul ;  "  an  eye  for  an  eye,  and  a 
tooth  for  a  tooth  "  is  the  proper  rule  for  regulating  the  meas- 
ure and  place  of  application  for  the  demerit  of  him  who  has 
violated  the  rights  of  some  other  Self.  The  hand  of  the 
matricide  must  be  cut  off  before  he  is  executed ;  castration  is 
the  fitting  reward  for  the  adulterer;  eyes  that  have  looked  too 
curiously  on  forbidden  objects  must  be  put  out ;  and  tongues 
that  have  been  guilty  of  slander  or  betrayal  deserve  to  be 
rooted  out.  Gross  and  vicious  bodily  selves  will  get  roasted 
and  tortured  in  the  hereafter ;  but  equally  gross  yet  virtuous 
selves  (because  "  faithful  "  to  their  religion)  will  be  feasted 
and  indulged  in  the  hereafter. 

As,  however,  the  conception  of  the  Self  becomes  more 
refined  and  spiritual,  the  entire  nature  of  virtuous  or  vicious 
conduct,  of  righteousness  and  sin,  together  with  the  nature 
of  the  inducements  to  right  conduct  and  of  the  rewards  and 
punishments  of  conduct,  undergo  important  modifications. 
Pure,  spiritual  selves  do  not  crave  to  be  feasted  and  indulged; 
and  intellectually  developed  but  wicked  selves  do  not  fear 
being  roasted  and  otherwise  tortured.  But  in  all  stages  of 
the  development  of  self-consciousness,  it  is  the  actual  Self, 
set  by  thought  and  imagination  into  relations  with  other 
selves,  and  measured  by  the  standard  of  an  ideal  Self, 
which  determines  the  character  of  ethical  theory  and  of  the 
practical  moral  life.  This  is  necessarily  and  unchangeably 
so ;  for  virtues  and  vices  are  qualifications,  not  of  things  or 
of  actions  as  such,  but  of  selves;  and  the  distinctively 
ethical  feelings  are  self-binding  and  self-appropriating. 
Inasmuch,  therefore,  as  conduct  is,  essentially  considered, 


ETHICAL  JUDGMENT  111 

a  voluntary  adjustment  of  one  moral  self  to  other  moral 
selves  through  the  media  of  things,  the  character  of  the 
prevalent  self-knowledge  influences  essentially  the  wrong 
and  right  of  conduct.  In  a  word,  only  a  being  that  is  con- 
sciously a  Moral  Self  can  be  at  once  the  author  and  the 
subject  of  moral  law,  the  appropriate,  because  rational  object 
of  approbation  and  disapprobation,  and  of  reward  and  punish- 
ment, in  the  distinctively  ethical  meaning  of  these  terms. 

That  any  being  must  be  intellectually  equipped  with  the 
power  to  pass  from  causes  to  effects  and  from  effects  to 
causes,  in  order  to  be  capable  of  the  moral  life,  scarcely 
needs  argument.  Indeed,  without  somehow  raising  and 
answering  the  questions.  Whence  ?  and  Why  ?  it  is  quite 
impossible  to  set  forth  in  imagination  the  conceivability  of 
a  moral  life.  In  saying  this  I  do  not  intend  to  emphasize  the 
fact  that  all  the  virtues  connected  with,  and  dependent  upon, 
our  human  conceptions  of  truth  are  unintelligible  apart  from 
the  domain  ruled  over  by  the  so-called  "principle  of  suffi- 
cient reason."  Nor  do  I  mean  simply  to  assert  that  without 
rational  knowledge  of  the  consequences  of  conduct  as  affect- 
ing the  interests  of  ourselves  and  others,  no  popular  or  scien- 
tific knowledge  of  ethical  principles  could  possibly  be 
attained.  But  still  further,  as  will  be  shown  in  another 
connection,  the  relation  between  motive  and  deed  of  will  is 
itself  the  most  typical  and  immediately  present  example  of 
the  causal  relation;  and  the  experience  of  men  with  this 
relation  is  the  precursor  and  the  postulate  of  all  their 
reasoning  about  external  causes  and  effects,  and  about  means 
and  ends  in  the  world  of  physical  phenomena.  Without  that 
extended  development  of  reasoning  faculty  under  the  control 
of  this  principle  which  belongs  to  man  alone  among  the  ani- 
mals, no  conception  of  a  moral  law,  or  of  a  social  unity 
which  shall  admit  of  the  practice  of  virtuous  and  vicious 
forms  of  conduct,  —  much  less  of  a  universal  moral  order  ex- 
tending itself  over  gods  and  men  and  over  all  spaces  and  all 


112  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

times  —  could  possibly  dawn,  rise,  and  grow  clearer  within 
the  consciousness  of  humanity. 

In  this,  as  in  all  the  other  intellectual  endowments  for 
the  life  of  conduct  and  the  acquirement  of  character,  both 
the  individual  and  the  race  come  under  the  principle  of 
development.  That  is  to  say,  the  clearness  and  effectiveness 
with  which  the  causal  principle  is  intellectually  recognized 
and  voluntarily  applied  admits  of  a  great  variety  of  degrees ; 
and,  in  fact,  a  great  variety  of  such  degrees  marks  the  place 
in  the  scale  of  ethical  evolution  occupied  by  different  persons 
and  different  portions  of  mankind.  In  the  more  elementary 
stages  of  culture  little  or  no  thought  of  rational  and  inevi- 
table connections  manifests  itself  in  moral  consciousness; 
the  Whence  and  the  Why  of  conduct,  of  custom,  and  of  the 
current  ethical  precepts  are  scarcely  inquired  after  and  not 
at  all  understood.  In  a  later  and  somewhat  higher  stage 
the  caprice  of  the  gods,  the  command  of  some  person  superior 
in  intelligence  and  authority,  or  the  bare  Will  of  the 
Omnipotent,  is  esteemed  a  sufficient  answer  to  most  of  such 
inquiries.  Still  later  those  conceptions  of  Necessity  and  Law 
which  convert  the  totality  of  human  experience  with  the 
interaction  of  persons  and  things,  and  of  persons  with  persons, 
into  a  colossal  Sj^stem  of  physical  and  psychical  mechanics, 
may  for  a  time  rule  the  thinking  and  satisfy  the  questionings 
of  men.  Such  is  perhaps  the  level  of  the  thought  and  imag- 
ination reached  by  the  majority  of  those  who  claim  to  be 
cultured  at  the  present  time.  But  I  am  confident  that  a  yet 
more  strenuous  and  comprehensive  thinking  and  a  loftier 
imagination  inevitably  produce  and  justify  another  picture 
of  the  connections  of  the  moral  World-Order.  Such  thinking 
and  imagining  enter  inevitabl}^  and  in  an  integrating  way, 
into  the  moral  life  of  the  race  by  enlarging  and  improving 
the  conceptions  of  the  Moral  Self  as  Will  and  as  Reason, 
and  by  the  growth  of  the  conception  of  the  Ground  of  all  causal 
relations  as  an  Absolute  Self, 


ETHICAL  JUDGMENT  113 

The  special  application  of  all  man's  cognitive  faculties  to 
the  interests  of  ethics  always  takes  the  form  of  an  Ethical 
Judgment.  In  this  respect  ethical  consciousness  resembles 
all  other  conscious  mental  processes;  for  judgment  is  the 
distinctive  and  culminating  thing  in  all  human  intellection. 
And  general  notions  whether  about  conduct  and  principles 
of  conduct  or  about  other  content  of  experience,  are  the 
results  of,  rather  than  the  material  for,  the  really  effective 
acts  of  judgment.  But  judgment  itself  is  a  piece  of  con- 
duct; and,  especially  where  it  concerns  the  qualities  of  con- 
duct, judgment  itself  is  either  good  or  bad  conduct.  In  its 
developed  form  it  implies  a  certain  affective  and  voluntary 
attitude  of  the  Moral  Self  toward  the  conduct  which  is 
judged. 

No  fact  of  experience  is  more  instructive  to  the  student  of 
ethics  than  the  pronouncing  of  judgment  by  his  fellowmen 
I  upon  matters  of  right  and  wrong  in  conduct.     He  notes  as 

important  a  remarkable  difference  in  the  character  of  their 
different  ethical  judgments,  in  the  manner  in  which,  in  any 
considerable  community,  different  matters  of  conduct  are 
pronounced  upon  by  the  different  members  of  the  com- 
munity. But  the  most  elementary  analysis  of  the  content  of 
human  consciousness  has  already  made  it  apparent  that  one 
conception  is  strictly  universal  for  all  ethical  judgments ;  it 
is  this  which  makes  them  ethical ;  it  is  the  character  of  the 
predicate.  This  is  expressed  by  the  significant  words.  Eight 
and  Wrong,  in  the  more  definitively  ethical  use  of  these 
words. 

Let  now  an  inquiry  be  made  as  to  the  grounds  on  which 
these  different  kinds  of  ethical  judgments  repose,  and  another 
series  of  somewhat  confusing  answers  will  be  elicited. 
Some  men  will  refer  to  unreasoned  feeling;  some  to  the 
prevalent  custom ;  some  to  self-interest  or  to  the  relation  sus- 
tained by  their  judgment  to  the  pursuit  of  their  own  well- 
being;  some  to  the  sanctions  of  religion,  — the  will  of  the 

8 


114  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

gods  or  the  Holy  Divine  Will ;  and  some  to  reasons  which 
lie  either  in  the  consequences  of  the  actions  judged,  or  in  a 
certain  conception  of  the  nature  of  moral  law,  or  even  of  the 
so-called  abstract  "Nature  of  the  Right." 

What  appears  true  of  any  particular  community,  when 
examined  with  respect  to  its  present  conditions  of  ethical 
judgment,  seems  also  to  be  enforced  and  illustrated  by  the 
history  of  the  evolution  of  ethical  judgment  in  the  whole 
race.  The  same  difference  of  judgments  about  matters  of 
conduct  and  of  the  reasons  more  or  less  intelligently  ren- 
dered in  answer  to  the  questions,  How  ?  and  Why  ?  belongs 
to  the  great  diversity  of  human  institutions  under  all  the 
changing  conditions  of  man's  development.  Custom  sets 
the  general  standard  for  such  judgments;  the  rather  is 
custom,  subjectively  considered,  itself  identical  with  the 
standard  judgments.  But  a  possible  distinction  is  always 
to  be  noticed  between  the  custom  considered  as  embodying 
the  mere  fact  of  judgment  and  that  judgment  to  which  the 
reason  and  feeling  of  the  individual  find  themselves  bound 
to  respond.  And,  in  fact,  actual  divergences,  at  first  on  the 
part  of  a  few  individuals,  are  constantly  arising  and  then 
gaining  strength  and  numbers  until  both  external  custom 
and  the  system  of  moral  judgments  corresponding  to  the 
custom  become  largely  modified  or  quite  completely  reversed. 
But  all  the  while,  as  far  back  as  man  is  man,  and  every- 
where that  man  is  found,  the  predicate  of  all  judgments 
about  matters  of  conduct  remains  unchanged.  The  custom 
itself  is  subject  to  this  predicate ;  customs  are  liable  to  be 
judged  as  either  right  or  wrong.  Hence  the  outcries  of 
reformers  of  custom,  like  that  of  Laotsu,  are  heard  down  the 
centuries  to  the  remotest  past :  "  Nowadays  we  despise  love 
of  humanity  and  are  insolent;  we  despise  economy  and  are 
wasteful ;  we  despise  modesty  and  strive  to  surpass  every 
one  else.     These  ways  lead  to  death. " 

Such  phenomena  as  those  just  described  demand  investi- 


ETHICAL  JUDGMENT  115 

gation  in  the  effort  to  obtain,  if  possible,  some  satisfactory 
answer  to  a  series  of  questions.  Of  these  questions  the  first 
which  I  shall  raise  may  be  stated  as  follows :  What  is  the 
distinctive  psychological  nature  of  the  judgments  of  men 
respecting  matters  of  conduct  ?  The  following  three  char- 
acteristics seem  to  afford,  for  the  present,  a  sufficient  answer 
to  this  question.  Of  these,  the  first  has  already  been  noticed; 
it  is  the  character  of  their  predicate.  Persons  and  things, 
considered  from  every  other  point  of  view,  have  an  indefinite 
number  of  qualities,  which  may  be  either  affirmed  or  denied 
of  every  particular  person  or  thing;  but  conduct  has  only 
one  quality,  when  regarded  from  the  ethical  point  of  view. 
We  may,  indeed,  be  in  doubt  in  any  particular  case  which  of 
the  forms  of  this  universal  predicate,  the  positive  or  the 
negative,  to  apply;  we  may  even  be  inclined  to  divide  our 
judgment  between  the  two  poles,  and  to  say  "  partly  right  and 
partly  wrong;"  and  we  certainly  recognize  an  endless  variety 
of  degrees  in  our  qualification  of  conduct.  But  if  we  judge 
on  moral  grounds  alone,  we  can  only  affirm  either  right  or 
not  right  for  this  matter  of  judgment.  Thinking  is  either 
logical  or  illogical;  speech  is  either  correct  or  incorrect; 
judgment  itself  is  either  false  or  true;  but  all  conduct  is 
either  right  or  wrong. 

Another  psychological  characteristic  of  all  ethical  judg- 
ment is  its  somewhat  pronounced  emotional  character. 
Men  do  not  ordinarily  affirm,  this  is  right  or  that  is  wrong, 
with  the  coolness  with  which  they  pronounce  a  familiar  pro- 
position in  geometry  or  in  some  matter  of  physical  science. 
Judgments  about  matters  of  conduct  are  apt  to  have  color, 
to  be  warmed  or  even  to  glow  with  feeling;  and  not  infre- 
quently they  excite  the  most  intense  passions  or  the  most 
effective  enthusiasms.  The  principal  reasons  for  this  char- 
acteristic of  ethical  judgment  appear  to  be  the  two  following : 
first,  such  acts  of  judgment  usually  have  some  connection 
with  the  more  visible  and  palpable  interests  of  men;  and^ 


116  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

second,  they  are,  from  their  very  nature,  inseparably  con- 
cerned with  those  moral  feelings  in  which  they  either  have 
their  origin  or  to  which  they  make  a  more  or  less  immediate 
and  forceful  appeal.  Hence,  all  the  natural  passions  and 
emotions,  —  such  as  anger,  fear,  jealousy,  pity,  sympathy, 
love,  and  hate,  —  and  all  the  higher  ethical  sentiments  of 
moral  obligation,  approbation,  and  merit  (or  their  oppo- 
sites),  flow  into  the  consciousness  of  the  judge  and  prevent 
his  judgment  from  being  "cool"  and  strictly  "scientific." 
Moreover,  the  common  feeling  and  judgment  of  mankind, 
as  well  as  the  deductions  of  psychological  ethics,  support  the 
opinion  that  it  is  fitly  so.  Ethical  judgment  ought  to  he 
formed  under  an  influence  from  moral  feeling;  \t\^  reason- 
ably of  a  somewhat  pronounced  emotional  character. 

It  is  doubtless  true  that  men  do,  with  no  little  intensity  of 
emotion,  debate  questions  of  truth  and  falsehood,  even  of  the 
abstract  sort,  when  no  human  conduct  can  be  supposed  to 
have  any  possible  influence  upon  the  decision  of  the  ques- 
tions, and  when  no  decision  of  the  questions  can  exercise 
any  discernible  influence  upon  their  physical  welfare. 
Indeed  the  fiercest  quarrels  and  most  pronounced  enmities 
sometimes  arise  over  such  debate.  No  mathematics  or 
physics  is  so  pure,  no  metaphysics  so  remote  from  all  prac- 
tical concernment,  no  scholastic  hair-splitting  so  obviously 
unprofitable,  as  that  its  judgments  may  not  be  hotly  con- 
tested. It  may  not  be  difficult  to  see  why  monophysites  and 
orthodox  should  wish  to  kill  each  other,  or  why  ecclesiasti- 
cism  should  find  it  necessary  to  persecute  Copernicus  or 
Galileo.  But  why  should  scholars  fall  out  with  one  another 
over  some  philological  punctilio,  or  over  the  nature  of  the 
infinitesimal  in  calculus,  or  over  the  possibility  of  an  w*^ 
dimension  of  space  ?  The  only  credible  answer  to  such  ques- 
tions recognizes  the  characteristic  quality  of  the  ethical 
judgment.  Men  quarrel  over  their  differing  judgments, 
because  they  regard  all  truth  as  discoverable  and   statable 


ETHICAL  JUDGMENT  117 

only  by  an  activity  of  mind  which  somehow  itself  partakes  of 
the  qualities  of  a  piece  of  conduct.  All  human  judgment  is 
regarded  as,  at  least  potentially,  a  moral  affair;  it  may  he 
that  voluntary  deficiencies  or  vices  in  the  Self  account  for 
the  very  manner  of  the  mental  seizure  and  pronouncement  of 
the  truth.  And  where  this  is  suspected,  "  cool  judgment "  is 
not  the  appropriate  attitude  of  the  critical  mind.  Coolness 
of  judgment  is  an  intellectual  excellence,  a  virtue,  in  the 
investigation  of  truth,  —  as  well  truth  of  conduct  as  other 
truth;  but  where  the  false,  or  imperfect,  or  dilatory  judg- 
ment is  itself  a  matter  of  bad  conduct,  there  coolness  of 
judgment  with  reference  to  it  is  not  the  normal  and  appro- 
priate condition  for  the  human  mind. 

The  third  psychological  characteristic  of  ethical  judgment 
is  the  peculiar  relation  which  it  sustains  to  the  voluntary 
states.  This  relation  follows,  with  a  sort  of  necessity,  from 
its  emotional  character.  To  judge  about  a  matter  of  conduct 
is  to  establish  a  claim  upon  the  will.  For  ethical  judgment 
is  not  simply  of  something  that  is,  or  is  not  so  in  fact,  or  is, 
or  is  not  true  in  principle ;  it  is  a  practical  affair.  Reason- 
ing about  matters  of  ethics  may,  indeed,  be  logical  or  illogi- 
cal, —  a  pure  theory,  a  play  with  the  weapon  of  the  syllogism, 
an  exercise  in  polemics.  But  this  is  not  the  manner  in  which 
men  usually  discuss  important  problems  of  conduct;  and 
when  judgment  is  reached,  even  if  its  statement  be  in  the 
most  impersonal  and  abstract  form  possible,  it  is  after  all  a 
judgment  of  something  that  some  person  ought  to  do,  or  to 
have  done.  If  you  helieve  in  the  truth  of  the  ethical  judgment^ 
you  are  hound  to  carry  your  helief  out  into  the  voluntary  life. 
Given  opportunity,  judgments  respecting  the  right  and  wrong 
of  conduct  become  convictions  of  duty. 

The  idea  of  the  Right  has  been  shown  to  be  the  one  ethical 
category.  Our  next  question  is,  then,  the  following:  — 
What  is  the  psychological  origin  of  this  category  ?  How 
does  this  conception  of  Tightness  arise  in  human  conscious- 


118  PHILOSOPHY   OF  CONDUCT 

ness  and  come  to  take  its  place  of  supremacy  among  all  the 
moral  conceptions?  The  answer  to  such  an  inquiry  as  this 
is  not  difficult  if  the  investigation  is  confined  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  conscious  processes  as  this  development  takes 
place  with  every  newly  born  individual  in  a  community 
already  organized  upon  a  social  and  ethical  basis.  But  the 
application  of  the  principles  of  biological  evolution  to  the 
problem  of  the  origin  of  ethical  judgment  in  the  race 
only  results  in  the  same  confusions  which  mark  our  inquiry 
into  the  rise  and  development  of  all  the  most  universal  and 
necessary  notions  of  mankind. 

If  the  so-called  "category,"  or' general  notion  of  rightness 
be  compared  with  the  categories  usually  recognized  as  giving 
the  forms  according  to  which  all  human  judgments  must  be 
shaped,  certain  differences,  as  well  as  certain  resemblances 
will  be  discerned.  It  is  desirable  to  examine  these  differ- 
ences and  resemblances,  at  least  in  a  preliminary  way, 
because  of  the  connection  which  this  category  has  with  the 
theoretical  discussion  of  the  Nature  of  the  Right. 

What,  then,  that  accords  with  facts  of  experience,  is  meant 
by  calling  the  conception  of  "the  Right"  the  one  ethical 
category  ?  In  answer  to  this  question  —  first  —  one  may 
refer  to  the  already  established  fact  of  its  universal  and 
necessary  character.  However  men  may  answer  the  ques- 
tion Why  ?  and  whatever  reasons  they  may  allege  as  the 
ground  of  their  answer,  there  is  always  this  same  moral 
qualification  assigned  to  the  conduct  by  the  act  of  judgment : 
the  category  of  Rightness  (or  its  opposite)  gives  the  universal 
form  of  ethical  judgment.  This  same  c@nception  fixes  also 
the  necessary  form  of  all  ethical  judgment;  it  is  the  rubric 
which  must  be  employed  by  man  in  accordance  with  his 
moral  nature,  as  now  constituted  in  the  evolution  of  the  race. 
And  as  far  back  as  we  can  trace  the  history  of  the  evolution 
of  morals  among  mankind,  the  same  formal  characteristic  of 
all  ethical  judgment  is  to  be  traced. 


ETHICAL  JUDGMENT  119 

Nor  can  it  be  denied,  in  the  second  place,  that  an  immense 
number  of  ethical  judgments  are  passed  by  all  men  where 
the  act  of  judging  seems  to  amount  to  a  sort  of  envisagement 
of  the  moral  quality  of  the  conduct  judged.  And  when  we 
include,  as  we  must,  the  indulgence  or  the  restraint  of  all 
the  impulsive  and  emotional  conscious  states  under  the  con- 
ception, we  may  perhaps  claim  that  most  of  human  conduct 
has  its  moral  quality  discerned  in  a  quasi-intmtiYe  way. 

Finally,  however,  this  intuitive  character  of  the  ethical 
conception  of  Rightness  is  easily  understood  when  we  refer 
again  to  its  psychological  origin.  It  is  the  experience  of 
ethical  feeling  (as  already  described,  chapters  v  and  vi)  in  its 
reaction  upon  the  stimulus  of  the  environment,  which  forms 
for  the  individual  the  earliest  basis  of  the  generalized  notion 
of  rightness.  Certain  forms  of  conduct,  that  is  to  say,  are 
habitually  accompanied  or  followed  by  the  feelings  of  ethical 
obligation,  approbation,  and  merit  (or  their  opposites),  and 
these  determine  the  so-called  right  (or  wrong)  forms  of 
conduct.  The  judgments  which  declare  these  experiences 
are,  in  their  earlier  form,  like  all  judgments  of  the  unde- 
veloped intellectual  life,  concrete  and  individual.  They  are 
judgments  of  the  individual's  experience ;  and  they  appear  in 
this  intuitive  form,  because,  in  their  origin,  they  are  not  the 
results  of  conscious  processes  of  ratiocination,  but  of  the 
prompt  response  of  feeling  and  of  its  fusion  with  certain 
ideo-motor  experiences. 

In  multitudes  of  other  cases,  however,  judgment  is  not, 
and  cannot  be,  so  intuitively  pronounced.  Elaborate  proc- 
esses of  reasoning  fail  to  make  perfectly  clear  whether  the 
particular  piece  of  conduct  ought  to  be  called  right  or  wrong ; 
and  this  is  even  as  true  of  inward  states,  of  motives,  and 
impulses,  as  it  is  of  actions.  But  further  discussion  of  this 
subject  must  be  left  for  the  more  theoretical  portion  of  our 
task. 

It  becomes  obvious,  therefore,  that  in  order  to  understand 


120  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

the  origin  and  character  of  ethical  judgment  we  have  yet 
other  questions  to  raise  and  to  answer.  The  individual  man, 
who  is  the  subject  and  the  critic  of  conduct,  the  agent  and 
the  judge,  is  never  merely  an  individual ;  he  is  always  and 
pre-eminently  a  member  of  the  race,  at  a  particular  time 
and  under  especial  circumstances  in  the  evolution  of  the  life 
of  the  race.  None  of  the  so-called  "  categories  "  —  not  even 
those  of  Space,  Time,  and  Causation  —  escape  important 
modifications  under  the  influence  of  these  all-embracing 
facts.  Much  less  than  the  others  can  such  a  so-called  cate- 
gory as  that  denominated  "Rightness,"  which  is  in  its  origin 
and  essential  nature  so  pre-eminently  social,  fail  to  undergo 
important  changes  in  the  particular  characteristics  of  its 
manifestation  and  its  application. 

We  are  compelled,  then,  to  ask :  What  is  the  historical 
origin  of  many  of  the  ethical  judgments  of  men  ?  To  this 
inquiry  I  answer:  They,  too,  are  judgments  of  experience 
that  have  acquired  the  immediacy,  certainty,  and  necessity, 
which  they  possess  for  the  individual  as  a  result  of  the 
prevalent  historical  conditions  shaping  the  life  of  the  race. 
Such  judgments  embody  the  conclusions  reached  upon  a 
basis  of  interaction  between  the  various  members  of  the  com- 
munity, and  between  the  community  as  a  whole  and  its  physi- 
cal, social,  and  political  environment. 

Of  the  principal  sources  for  men's  ethical  judgments  I 
now  distinguish  the  following  four.  The  established  life  and 
government  of  the  family  furnish  many  such  judgments. 
In  respect  of  no  other  equally  important  matter  do  we  find  the 
morals  of  men  —  the  relations  they  enter  into  and  sustain 
with  good  conscience  and  with  the  approbation  of  their 
fellows  —  so  changeable  as  in  respect  of  the  customs  and 
forms  of  the  family  life.  Always  and  everywhere  there  are 
right  and  wrong  relations  recognized  as  possible,  existing 
between  husband  and  wife.  But  even  where  some  sort  of 
fidelity  is  rigidly  exacted  of  the  woman  and  some  sort  of  pro- 


ETHICAL   JUDGMENT  121 

tective  kindness  is  required  of  the  man,  in  the  most  important 
matters  affecting  their  relations  the  rules  of  good  conduct 
toward  each  other  are  exceedingly  variable.  Thus  the  law 
of  the  family  may  enforce  the  husband's  right  to  his  wife  by 
punishing  adultery  with  death,  but  think  it  a  duty  for  men 
to  lend  their  wives  to  their  guests,  or  to  exchange  them  with 
their  friends.  Among  some  of  the  Arabian  tribes  the  wife 
is  required  to  remain  true  to  her  husband  three  days  out  of 
four ;  but  every  fourth  day  it  is  right  for  her  to  do  as  she 
will.  The  Samoan  father  may  properly  resent  the  seduction 
of  his  daughter  by  one  of  the  same  tribe,  but  must  esteem  it 
right  for  him,  as  a  host,  to  make  a  temporary  loan  of  her. 
The  most  righteous  of  the  Patriarchs,  with  good  conscience 
and  without  divine  rebuke,  practised  polygamy;  and  the 
sentiment  of  to-day,  which  approves  of  the  penitentiary  for 
the  bigamist,  regards  it  as  a  mark  of  its  higher  civilization 
that  divorce  is  constantly  made  easier.  As  to  the  right 
limits  of  consanguinity  between  husband  and  wife  the  same 
diversity  is  found.  The  royal  priests  of  ancient  Egypt  con- 
secrated the  marriage  of  brothers  and  sisters;  while  the 
Church  of  England  still  refuses  to  consecrate  a  remarriage 
which  is  in  not  a  few  cases,  the  most  rational  possible,  — 
viz.,  with  the  sister  of  one's  deceased  wife.  As  respects 
children  and  parents,  in  ancient  Rome  and  in  Old  Japan  the 
patria  potestas  was  so  construed  as  to  make  it  right  for  the 
father  to  put  to  death  his  disobedient  child ;  and  the  same 
thing  was  expressly  commanded  to  the  Hebrews  by  the 
Mosaic  Law.  But  now  in  large  portions  of  the  most  refined 
communities,  the  use  of  physical  force  or  physical  pain  to 
secure  obedience  in  the  family  is  deemed  not  only  the 
height  of  unwisdom,  but  a  kind  of  crime  which  discredits 
the  moral  character  of  the  parent.  Thus  the  most  sincere 
and  enlightened  judgments  which  the  individual  approves 
have,  many  of  them,  their  historical  origin  in  the  develop- 
ment of  this  institution  on  which  the  very  existence   and 


122  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

continuance  of  the  race  depends.  And  the  intuitive  charac- 
ter which  such  judgments  appear  to  possess  must  be  explained 
historically  as  arising  in  the  experience  of  the  race. 

The  codes  of  the  different  social  classes,  professions,  busi- 
nesses, and  organizations  of  every  kind,  furnish  the  individual 
with  many  unquestioned  and  unreasoned  judgments  upon 
matters  of  right  and  wrong  conduct.  In  such  spheres  the 
aesthetically  proper  or  fitting  thing,  and  the  morally  right 
thing,  are  nearly  if  not  quite  identical.  For  example,  some 
amount  and  sort  of  clothing  is  almost  universally  deemed 
necessary  for  adult  human  beings,  and  the  wrong-doing  of 
non-conformity  to  the  custom  here  is  generally,  though  not 
universally,  regarded  as  a  breach  of  the  virtue  of  modesty. 
But  quite  as  universal  is  the  judgment  that  different  sorts  of 
persons  ought  to  wear  different  sorts  of  clothing.  The 
Fiji  Chief  submits  to  the  painful  process  of  tattooing,  and 
the  Englishman  of  the  upper  classes  endures  in  August 
weather  the  torture  of  black  coat  and  starched  shirt  and 
collar  —  both  that  they  may  appear  as  gentlemen  of  distinc- 
tion ought  to  appear.  The  priest  or  clergyman  who  dresses 
like  the  jockey  or  the  flashy  "  tough  "  is,  with  warmth  of 
conviction,  blamed  not  only  for  his  lack  of  good  taste  but 
also  for  an  immoral  overstepping  of  the  customs  of  his  class. 
If  one  set  of  critics  considers  it  to  argue  a  wicked  disrespect 
for  the  dead  not  to  give  them  an  expensive  funeral  and  also 
wear  mourning  garments  for  them;  does  not  the  other  set 
consider  it  an  equally  wicked,  because  useless  extravagance 
to  conform  to  the  custom  in  these  regards  ?  And  what  can 
the  good  man  do  to  avoid  both  these  forms  of  wrong-doing 
better  than  quietly  to  conform  to  the  ruling  custom,  while 
availing  himself  of  Aristotle's  principle  of  "moderation  "  ? 

But  judgments  as  to  the  right  and  wrong  in  matters  of 
clothing  for  different  classes  and  different  occasions  are, 
from  the  higher  and  more  strictly  moral  point  of  view, 
trivial  compared  with  many  other  kinds  of  what  I  shall  call 


ETHICAL  JUDGMENT  128 

the  "  classified  "  ethical  judgment.  "  Honor  among  thieves  " 
is  no  less  honor,  no  less  a  virtue  so  far  as  it  goes,  because 
it  is  so  limited  in  its  application.  To  love  one's  neighbor 
and  hate  one's  enemy,  undoubtedly  expresses  the  moral 
sentiment  of  one  side  of  the  Old-Testament  morality.  And 
to  deceive  or  even  to  lie  in  war  is  not  to-day  regarded  as  a 
breach  of  essential  morals  by  the  great  majority  of  Christian 
people,  —  while  the  same  majority,  hot  as  it  is  to  resent 
cruelty  and  savagism  when  turned  against  itself,  looks  with 
tolerance,  if  not  with  approbation,  upon  its  own  cruel  and 
savage  treatment  of  so-called  "inferior  races."  Among  the 
mercantile  classes,  how  few  are  they  whose  moral  conscious- 
ness is  at  all  sensitive  to  the  customary  false  weights,  false 
labels,  and  deceitful  advertisements  ?  What  would  be  the 
purifying  effect  upon  our  courts  of  justice,  and  upon  our 
halls  of  legislation,  if  lawyers  and  politicians  no  longer  made 
special  exceptions  for  their  class  from  the  strictest  demands 
of  veracity  and  sincerity  ?  And  as  to  social  purity,  only  the 
grossest  ignorance  of  facts  can  fail  to  appreciate  the  enor- 
mous difference  which  the  highly  civilized,  as  well  as  the 
grossly  barbarous  communities,  make  between  what  is  right 
or  wrong  in  the  conduct  of  the  "  privileged  classes  "  and  the 
right  and  the  wrong  for  "  ordinary  people. " 

In  the  wider  circle  of  the  laws,  written  or  unwritten,  and 
the  general  customs  of  the  tribe,  the  state,  the  nation,  lie 
the  sources  of  many  of  the  individual's  spontaneous  judg- 
ments. The  very  foundations  of  the  political  structure  in 
all  its  forms  would  be  shaken  and  quite  undermined,  if  all 
keeping  of  the  laws  as  obligatory  upon  the  conscience  of  the 
citizen  were  left  to  discussion  and  to  inference.  The  day 
has  indeed  gone  by  when  the  theory  held  by  Hobbes  as  to 
the  origin  and  nature  of  the  Right  can  be  successfully 
resuscitated.  But  there  was  a  certain  large  measure  of 
truth  in  this  theory.  No  theory  can  define  a  priori  just 
where  the  duty  to  accept  the  judgment  of  the  ruling  power, 


124  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

when  embodied  in  law  or  national  custom,  comes  to  an  end ; 
and  where  the  higher  right  of  appeal  to  one's  own  moral 
consciousness  begins.  No  amount  of  tact  can  always  infal- 
libly detect  this  dividing  line.  But  undoubtedly  it  is  in 
general  the  duty  of  every  individual  unquestioningly  to  obey 
the  law,  and  to  conform  to  the  custom  of  the  land.  This  is 
true  quite  irrespective  of  the  amount  of  self-government 
which  belongs  to  the  average  citizen.  Indeed,  the  anomalous 
thing  about  this  land  of  America  to-day,  where  the  maxi- 
mum of  self-government  is  supposed  to  have  been  reached,  is 
the  fact  that  the  right  and  duty  to  make  the  laws  have  bred 
a  feeling  of  right  to  break  them;  and  that  in  no  small 
number  of  cases,  the  law-makers  are  the  chief  law-breakers 
in  every  state  and  in  the  nation  at  large.  Yet  even  this 
anomalous  condition  cannot  contravene  the  yet  more  general 
fact  that,  on  the  average  and  in  the  long  run,  the  individual 
does  actually  get  his  judgments  as  to  matters  of  right  and 
wrong,  without  much  reasoning  of  his  own  —  as  it  were, 
intuitively  —  from  the  laws  in  force  and  the  customs  current 
in  the  organized  society  of  which  he  is  a  member. 

In  the  fourth  place,  the  customs,  precepts,  and  statutes  of 
religion  furnish  a  source  of  the  spontaneous  judgments  of 
the  individual  in  matters  of  conduct.  Until  morality  and 
religion  have  become  separated  in  a  somewhat  formal  and 
crystallized  way,  no  other  source  of  those  ethical  judgments 
which  seem  most  self-evident  and  obligatory  is  so  powerful 
as  religion.  Judgments  originating  in  this  source  penetrate 
all  the  other  sources;  ethical  judgments  pertaining  to  the 
life  of  the  family,  judgments  of  so-called  "class  morality," 
and  the  laws  and  most  general  customs  of  the  whole  people, 
are  everywhere  largely  of  religious  origin.  Nor  is  this 
coincidence  in  the  sources  of  judgment  on  matters  of  morals 
and  religion  at  all  surprising  when  we  consider  how  closely 
allied  are  the  moral  and  religious  natures  in  the  one  human 
nature.     To  treat  the  gods  with  disrespect,  to  attempt  to 


ETHICAL  JUDGMENT  125 

deceive  them,  or  to  defraud  them  of  their  property  or  of  their 
dues,  is  a  particularly  heinous  and  dangerous  kind  of  wrong- 
doing among  those  communities  that  are  lowest  in  the  ethi- 
cal scale.  In  the  relations  of  the  sexes  also,  the  priesthood 
or  clergy  are  almost  universally  regarded  as  coming  under 
special  provisions  respecting  the  right  and  wrong  of  conduct; 
although  opinion  may  differ  as  to  what  is  right,  what  wrong, 
all  the  way  from  the  rule  which  makes  it  a  sin  for  a  priest 
even  to  look  upon  the  face  of  a  woman  to  the  code  in  force 
among  some  of  the  Hindu  castes,  which  considers  it  right  for 
the  Brahman  to  enjoy  an  almost  unlimited  license.  Such 
license  was  conceded  by  the  opinion  of  ancient  Greece  as 
right  for  the  gods  in  their  intercourse  with  men.  In  similar 
way  elaborate  ceremonial  purifications  become  of  the  most 
obligatory  moral  character;  and  not  to  abstain  from  many 
desirable  gratifications,  because  religion  has  rendered  these 
tabu,  is  to  outrage  the  moral  law.  In  India  almost  the  only 
moral  restraint  upon  the  conduct  of  the  multitudes,  a  re- 
straint as  powerful  as  it  is  spontaneously  and  unquestion- 
ingly  accepted,  consists  of  the  code  of  religious  ceremonial, 
belief,  and  superstition.  The  ten  commandments  which  are 
an  undisputed  part  of  the  creed  of  millions  of  twentieth- 
century  men  and  women  were  originally  due  to  a  "thus  saith 
the  Lord, "  understood  to  have  been  uttered  to  the  founder  of 
an  ancient  religion.  For  the  great  majority  of  men,  all  over 
the  earth's  surface  and  far  back  in  the  world's  history,  the 
one  class  of  judgments  respecting  the  right  and  wrong  of 
conduct  to  which  heart  and  reason  alike  has  seemed  most 
unhesitatingly  and  intuitively  to  respond  comprises  the 
customs,  precepts,  and  statutes,  that  have  had  their  origin 
in  the  religious  experience  of  humanity. 

But  with  unreasoned  ethical  judgment  the  moral  con- 
sciousness of  men  has  not  reached  its  highest  intellectual 
development.  Whatever  of  immediate  self-evidence  can  be 
made  out  for  certain  instances  in  the  application  of  the  so- 


126  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

called  category  of  Rightness  no  more  prevents  the  use  of 
reflection  and  inference  in  forming  judgments  upon  matters 
of  conduct,  or  the  growth  of  the  moral  code,  than  the  intui- 
tive character  of  the  category  of  space  prevents  the  progress 
of  geometry  or  of  surveying.  Without  intellectual  develop- 
ment on  the  part  of  the  individual,  neither  ethical  theory, 
nor  systems  of  morals,  nor  essential  morality,  could  exist  or 
develop.  It  is  to  the  men  who  doubt  the  essential  morality 
of  the  prevalent  custom,  who  question  the  rationality  of  the 
current  ethical  judgments,  who  insist  on  knowing  the  Why  ? 
of  conduct  and  character,  that  the  race  owes  most  for  such 
ethical  advances  as  it  has  already  made.  He  who  does  not 
transcend  the  stage  of  intuitive  feeling,  or  of  unquestioning 
acceptance  of  the  common  judgment,  remains  a  morally 
undeveloped  man. 

As  an  historical  fact  all  adult  individuals,  no  matter  how 
rigidly  fixed  the  moral  code  may  have  become  previous  to 
their  existence,  and  in  spite  of  the  most  intolerant  and 
oppressive  reign  of  conventionality  and  custom,  do  take  some 
part  in  the  framing  of  the  current  and  ruling  judgments  on 
questions  of  the  right  and  wrong  of  conduct.  He  who,  as  a 
member  of  the  commonwealth  of  ethical  judgment,  only  aims 
to  think  and  feel  precisely  as  the  others  do,  nevertheless 
becomes  himself  a  moulder  of  the  community's  thought  and 
feeling.  His  influence  may  seem  quite  inappreciable,  but  it 
is  none  the  less  real.  In  the  case  of  those  more  independent 
minds  who  —  as  the  popular  saying  runs  —  "  think  for  them- 
selves," the  ethical  judgments  made  by  the  individual  on  a 
basis  of  conscious  inference  may  not  only  determine  the 
dominant  maxims  of  his  own  moral  life  but  in  time  even 
effect  an  important  moral  revolution  in  the  judgments  of  the 
society  of  which  he  is  only  a  single  member. 

Undoubtedly,  the  clearness  with  which  different  men  think 
out  their  conclusions  on  matters  of  conduct  differs  very 
greatly ;  and  as  well,  the  character  of  the  grounds  on  which 


ETHICAL  JUDGMENT  127 

they  place  their  ethical  judgments,  the  reasons  they  are  ready 
to  assign  for  the  conclusions  at  which  they  have  arrived. 
Hence  the  possibility  of  unlimited  debate  about  what  is  right 
and  wrong;  hence  also,  in  part,  the  doubtful  character  be- 
longing to  all  elaborate  systems  of  casuistry.  But  this  is 
only  to  call  attention  to  the  general  psychological  fact  that, 
in  matters  of  conduct  as  in  all  other  matters,  different  per- 
sons have  different  degrees  and  combinations  of  the  judging 
faculty,  and  different  stores  of  experience  on  which  to  draw 
for  the  material  of  reasoning  and  its  concluding  judgment. 

Moreover,  there  is  in  ethics,  both  practical  and  theoretical, 
another  most  potent  cause  of  difference;  men  differ  as 
respects  their  entire  conception  of  the  aims  and  values  of  life, 
and  as  respects  the  character  already  acquired  in  the  more  or 
less  intelligent  pursuit  of  those  aims,  under  the  estimates  of 
value  assigned  to  each  of  them.  In  a  word,  the  ethical  judg- 
ments of  different  individuals,  so  far  as  they  are  based  upon 
conscious  inference,  will  depend  in  the  main  upon  these  three 
considerations:  namely  (1)  natural  or  acquired  power  of 
forming  judgment;  (2)  characteristic  experience  (the  experi- 
ence which  belongs  to  the  individual) ;  and  (3)  ideas  of  ends 
and  of  values,  —  while  over  all,  and  through  all,  the  princi- 
ple of  habit  will  assert  its  power. 

Of  these  three  considerations  only  the  last  two  admit  of  a 
brief  treatment.  The  accumulation  of  experience  is  a  growth 
of  knowledge  as  to  the  relations  of  means  and  ends,  and  of 
causes  and  effects.  But  every  man's  conduct  is  his  way  of 
setting  himself  into  the  great  system  of  means  and  ends, 
of  causes  and  effects,  —  into  the  World-System.  Every 
man's  conduct  is  also,  in  some  peculiar  meaning  of  the 
words,  his  very  own  contribution  to  the  total  working  and 
final  outcome  of  this  World-System.  As  the  individual  man 
acquires  experience  of  what  he  can  consciously  and  voluntarily 
effect  he  becomes  increasingly  capable  of  relatively  indepen- 
dent and  well-reasoned  ethical  judgment.    His  conduct  is  thus 


128  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

an  intelligent  means  to  certain  ends ;  and  the  consequences  of 
his  conduct  are  effects  which  are  attributable  to  his  Self  as 
to  their  cause.  He  becomes  conscious,  that  is  to  say,  of  his 
Self  as  both  effect  and  cause,  both  means  and  ends;  and, 
in  some  degree,  he  learns  precisely  how  the  manifold 
desired  relations  are,  in  fact,  to  be  secured.  Thus  the 
rightness  or  wrongness  of  the  particular  forms  of  conduct 
is  made  to  depend  upon  a  judgment  whose  grounds  are  to 
be  found  in  the  conscious  experience  of  the  judging  mind. 

In  all  this,  however,  the  supreme  consideration  is  often  — 
if  not  always  —  found  in  the  estimate  which  is  placed  upon 
the  value  of  the  ends  to  be  attained  and,  in  a  subsidiary  way, 
of  the  means  to  be  employed  in  their  attainment.  There  is, 
indeed,  a  certain  side  of  all  human  experience  which  goes  a 
considerable  way  toward  the  seeming  justification  of  Schopen- 
hauer's contention  for  a  blind  and  purposeless  f orthputting  of 
Will,  in  the  World  at  large  and  in  the  individual  man.  On 
the  other  hand,  it  is  a  most  indubitable  fact  of  experience 
that  man,  and  especially  developed  man,  does  consciously 
pursue  ends  that  have  in  his  eyes  higher  or  lower  degrees 
of  different  kinds  of  value.  And  in  the  case  of  each 
individual,  the  character  of  these  ideas  of  ends  and  of  values 
determines  his  judgments  upon  matters  of  conduct  and  of 
character. 

It  should  not  be  necessary  again  at  this  point  to  remind 
ourselves  that  we  are  not  now  considering  how  to  determine 
which  of  two  contending  ethical  judgments  is  most  trust- 
worthy; or  which  of  the  different  aims  or  methods  of  evalu- 
ation is  most  justifiable  in  the  light  of  the  supreme  moral  Law 
or  of  the  highest  moral  Ideal.  Our  present  purpose  is  much 
more  modest.  It  is  simply  to  show  how,  in  the  development 
of  ethical  judgment,  a  higher  or  lower  stage  of  quasi-inde- 
pendent  reasoning  is  reached  by  every  adult  individual;  and 
what  is  the  efi'ect  of  this  fact  upon  that  use  of  human  rational 
faculty  which  all  morality  and  moral  development  implies. 


ETHICAL  JUDGMENT  129 

There  are  two  important  general  assumptions  to  which  one 
is  brought  by  the  psychological  study  of  ethical  judgment. 
First,  man's  intelligence  is  rightfully  regarded  as  obligating 
him  to  its  own  use  in  planning  and  guiding  his  own  conduct. 
Noblesse  oblige,  — and  not  less  the  nobility  of  rationality  than 
the  nobility  of  rank  or  birth.  Thus  the  thought  is  led  around 
again  to  a  position  which  is  in  neighborly  contiguity  with 
the  position  from  which  the  discussion  of  the  nature  of  ethi- 
cal judgment  took  its  departure:  So-called  "Conscience,"  as 
a  matter  of  intellectual  equipment  for  such  judgment,  is  no 
whit  different  from  so-called  ordinary  intelligence.  But 
this  "  ordinary  "  intelligence  is  human  intelligence ;  it  is 
man's  intellect,  in  its  full  use,  culminating  in  judgment  as 
to  the  right  and  wrong  of  conduct.  Moreover,  this  use  of 
intelligence  is  itself  either  right  or  wrong  —  in  the  ethical 
meaning  of  these  words ;  for  this  use  is  a  species  of  conduct. 
And  the  moral  feelings  of  obligation,  of  approbation  and  dis- 
approbation, and  of  merit  and  demerit,  have  as  much  place, 
and  as  binding  an  authority,  in  respect  of  this,  as  of  any  other 
species  of  conduct.  If  we  generalize  this  fact  which,  like  a 
silent  postulate,  permeates  all  our  estimates  of  the  nature 
and  value  of  ethical  judgment,  and  bring  our  generalization 
into  correspondence  with  that  conclusion  to  which  all  our 
study  of  psychological  ethics  is  pointing  the  way,  we  may 
anticipate  the  following  conclusions.  The  intellectual  proc- 
esses are,  of  course,  essential  to  the  existence  of  moral 
Selfhood;  the  noblest  and  best  use  of  them  is  characteristic 
of  the  Ideal  Self;  and  such  a  use  is  morally  obligatory, 
necessarily  to  be  approbated  by  moral  consciousness,  and  to 
be  considered  meritorious ;  for  it  is  an  essential  part  of  the 
realization  of  the  Ideal  of  a  perfect  Self  existing  in  social 
relations  with  other  selves. 

The  second  assumption  involved  in  the  doctrine  of  ethical 
judgment  is  this :  Only  through  the  exercise  of  intelligence 
does  the  so-called  "  motive  ''  pass  over,  as  it  were,  into  the 

9 


130  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

choice  and  into  the  deed.  It  is  not  motive  alone,  or  judg- 
ment alone,  or  deliberate  choice  alone,  whether  followed  or 
not  by  a  successful  executive  action,  to  which  the  qualifica- 
tion of  moral  goodness  or  badness  should  be  attached.  It  is 
rather  to  the  total  Self  in  action  —  Feeling,  Intellect,  and 
Will,  in  a  living  unity.  Motives  must,  indeed,  be  judged 
morally;  but  they  must  also  be  more  or  less  willed,  in  order 
to  be  really  motives.  Judgments,  too,  are  motived  and  more 
or  less  subjected  to  volition.  The  highest  expressions  of 
will,  the  deliberate  choices,  are  themselves  the  subject  of 
both  moral  feeling  and  moral  judgment.  Good  intentions 
alone  are  not  the  only  moral  good ;  as  Professor  Dewey  has 
well  said:  "  The  conceived  results  constitute  the  content  of  the 
act  to  he  performed.  They  are  not  merely  relevant  to  its 
morality,  but  are  its  moral  quality."  Therefore,  I  affirm 
without  hesitation :  A  virtuous  intellect  is  essential  to  a  vir- 
tuous man. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  understand  the  main  features 
of  the  evolution  of  ethical  judgment,  both  in  the  individual 
and  in  the  race.  This  evolution  follows  the  same  laws  which 
control  man's  total  development  of  intelligence.  In  a  certain 
somewhat  loose  way,  three  stages  may  be  distinguished.  In 
the  earliest  stage,  it  is  feeling  largely,  if  not  almost  wholly, 
which  determines  the  judgment;  in  this  stage,  the  judgment 
is  scarcely  more  than  a  declaration  of  the  fact  of  feeling. 
Children  and  childish  men  think  little  as  to  the  reasons  why 
they  feel  and  therefore  judge  as  they  do ;  they  know  almost 
nothing  of  the  influences  which  are  operative  upon  their  own 
minds,  whether  these  causes  belong  to  the  original  constitu- 
tion of  human  nature  or  are  themselves  the  result  of  the 
previous  experiences  of  the  race.  In  a  word,  amongst  savages 
as  amongst  the  children  of  civilized  communities,  judgments 
about  the  right  and  wrong  of  conduct  arise  in  blind,  instinc- 
tive feelings.  If  we  could  get  very  near  to  the  so-called 
primitive  man,  we  should  undoubtedly  find  him  yet  more  a 


J 


ETHICAL  JUDGMENT  131 

creature  and  a  subject  of  feeling.  We  should  find  him  —  if 
as  jet  man^  however  primitive  —  moved  by  passions  and 
emotions  to  do  certain  things  which  the  sentiments  of  obli- 
gation and  of  ethical  and  sesthetical  admiration  and  approba- 
tion were  moving  him  not  to  do.  We  should  find  him  in  this 
strange  conflict  of  feeling,  this  schism  between  the  lower 
and  the  higher  Self;  but  the  schism  would  not  be  compre- 
hended; nor  would  the  grounds  be  recognized  on  which  the 
authority  of  the  higher  moral  consciousness  was  reposed. 

The  second  stage  in  the  evolution  of  ethical  judgment  is 
reached  whenever  experience  of  the  effects  of  conduct  has 
embodied  itself  in  certain  more  or  less  fixed  customs,  or  in 
the  form  of  moral  maxims,  precepts,  and  regulations,  or  in 
the  shape  of  something  resembling  a  code  of  conduct  defining 
what  is  to  be  esteemed  right,  what  wrong,  by  the  community. 
But  even  at  this  stage  the  multitude  of  individuals  in  their 
private  ethical  judgments  only  echo  and  reiterate,  as  they 
for  the  most  part  unquestioningly  accept,  the  generalizations 
reached  in  some  form  by  the  generations  of  their  predeces- 
sors in  the  moral  life.  In  this  stage,  whenever  the  attempt 
is  made  to  give  reasons  for  any  particular  judgment,  such 
an  attempt  ends  in  a  reference  to  the  fact,  as  bare  fact,  of 
the  conclusions  already  accepted  by  the  majority.  Thus  most 
of  the  current  "  reasoning  "  on  moral  matters  might  be  sum- 
marized in  the  one  major  premise  for  the  standard  ethical 
syllogisms:  It  is  right  to  follow  the  custom;  doing  right  is 
doing  as  the  ancients  have  done  and  as  people  generally 
do  now. 

But  even  this  stage  in  the  evolution  of  ethical  judgment 
cannot  come  into  existence,  much  less  long  continue  to  exist, 
without  certain  individuals  at  least  making  considerable 
advances  into  a  third  and  higher  stage.  In  this  third  stage, 
the  science  and  philosophy  of  conduct  become,  to  some 
extent,  the  interest  and  the  attainment  of  the  multitude  of 
individuals  of  whom  society  consists. 


132  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

The  history  of  ethical  evolution  by  no  means,  of  course, 
warrants  us  in  making  a  clean-cut  separation  between  these 
different  stages  of  man's  ethical  progress.  Other  factors  and 
laws  than  those  which  are  distinctly  intellectual  take  part  in 
this  evolution.  No  community  at  any  time  can  be  regarded 
as  stationary  in  either  one  of  these  three  stages,  to  the  exclu- 
sion of  all  examples  of  the  other  stages.  Amongst  the 
lowest  savages  are  found  some  who,  more  than  others,  think 
for  themselves  touching  matters  of  conduct;  amongst  the 
most  highly  cultured  ethically,  the  majority,  for  most  of 
their  ethical  judgments,  trust  to  unreasoned  feeling  or  accept 
the  conclusions  handed  down  from  preceding  generations. 
And  it  is  well  that  it  is  so.  For  thus  the  "  cake  of  custom  " 
is  formed ;  only  thus  could  enough  of  uniformity  be  secured 
to  constitute  a  safe  and  true  social  environment  such  as  is 
the  necessary  presupposition  of  any  ethical  life  or  ethical 
development.  But  all  the  while  the  race  —  or  at  the  least, 
that  portion  of  it  which  is  undergoing  a  real  moral  evolution 
—  is  learning  more  and  more  how  to  make  up  its  mind,  on 
the  ground  of  an  enlarging  experience  and  by  use  of  its 
improved  powers  of  ratiocination,  regarding  the  right  and 
wrong  of  conduct.  A  progress  in  ethical  enlightenment  is 
certainly  taking  place  with  this  portion  of  mankind;  but 
whether  this  portion,  or  the  whole  of  mankind,  is  growing 
better  in  disposition  and  in  will  in  proportion  to  its  increased 
enlightenment — why,  this  is  another  and  a  distinctly  broader 
and  more  difficult  question. 


CHAPTER  YIII 

MORAL  FREEDOM 

In  the  preliminary  analysis  of  the  content  of  moral  con- 
sciousness it  was  found  that  some  degree  at  least  of  self- 
control,  superior  to  that  possessed  by  the  lower  animals,  is 
necessary  to  man's  equipment  for  the  moral  life  and  for  the 
development  of  character.  The  sphere  of  ethics  is  the  sphere 
of  conduct  and  character.  But  conduct  and  character  imply 
choice  —  of  one  deed  rather  than  another,  of  one  course  of 
action  in  preference  to  some  other;  and  in  their  highest 
manifestation,  the  choice  of  an  end,  an  ideal  that  shall 
largely  subordinate  and  control  the  entire  life.  Hence  the 
continued  necessity  for  ethics  of  a  discussion  of  the  nature 
and  extent  of  man's  moral  freedom.  By  ''moral  freedom  "  I 
mean  such  a  kind  and  amount  of  self-control  as  belongs, 
both  in  fact  and  in  accordance  with  the  demands  of  a  sound 
ethical  theory,  to  man's  moral  life  and  moral  development. 

It  would  manifestly  be  impossible,  however,  to  bring 
the  whole  range  of  psychological  and  metaphysical  problems 
which  form  important  parts  of  this  ethical  problem  ^  within 
the  reasonable  limits  of  a  treatise  on  the  philosophy  of  con- 
duct. To  psychology  appertains  the  description  and,  so  far 
as  possible,  explanation  of  the  phenomena  of  the  voluntary 
nature  of  man.     To  metaphysics  one  might  properly  wish  to 

1  For  a  fuller  discussion  of  these  problems  the  reader  must  be  referred  to  the 
other  works  of  the  author,  especially  to  Psychology,  Descriptive  and  Explana- 
tory, chap.  V,  xi,  xxi,  xxvi ;  A  Theory  of  Reality,  chap,  iii,  vii,  x,  xiii,  xix ; 
Philosophy  of  Knowledge,  chap,  x,  xivj  and  Philosophy  of  Mind,  chap,  ir, 
vii,  viii,  xii. 


134  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

relegate  the  discussion  of  the  nature  of  Causation,  in  both 
the  physical  and  the  psychical  fields;  of  the  conceptions  of 
Necessity,  of  Law,  of  the  Indeterminate,  and  of  the  real 
Relations  which  exist  between  the  different  psychoses,  or 
between  the  Body  and  the  Mind  of  man;  and,  finally,  the 
speculative  treatment  of  the  Absolute,  the  Infinite,  etc.,  and 
of  its  relations  to  the  Relative  and  the  Finite.  But  how  can 
ethics  wait  for  psychology  and  metaphysics  to  solve  all 
these  complicated  and  profoundly  difficult  problems  ? 

This  entanglement  of  the  problem  of  man's  moral  freedom 
with  so  many  psychological  and  metaphysical  problems  has 
given  occasion  for  certain  intolerable  attitudes  toward  the 
task  of  ethical  philosophy.  Against  two  such  attitudes  I 
wish  to  make  an  especially  earnest  protest  at  this  point. 
The  one  is  the  attitude  of  indifference  or  of  contemptuous 
dissatisfaction  with  all  proposals  for  renewed  discussion  of 
so  insolvable  a  problem.  The  other  is  the  attitude  of  satisfac- 
tion and  "  cock-sure-ness  "  that  the  matter  has  at  last  been 
definitely  settled  in  the  interests  of  a  so-called  strictly  scien- 
tific conception  of  human  nature  and  of  its  ethical,  as  well 
as  of  all  its  other  development.  It  is  difficult  to  say  which 
of  these  two  attitudes  is  theoretically  the  more  unwarrantable 
and  practically  the  more  mischievous;  it  is  certain  that 
both  of  them  should  be  challenged  and  criticised  by  every 
student  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct. 

Ethics  can  never  cease  to  be  profoundly  and  vitally  inter- 
ested in  the  discussion  of  the  problem  of  moral  freedom ;  for 
this  problem,  like  a  banyan  tree,  although  it  affords  friendly 
shelter  or  deadly  shade  for  all  sorts  of  common  folk,  sends 
its  many  branches  down  to  take  roots  in  the  dark  and  hidden 
places  whence  comes  its  own  life,  and  all  Life.  It  is  true 
that  the  problem  has  been  attacked  over  and  over  again  by 
minds  of  the  keenest  analytic  powers,  and  left,  after  the 
attack,  in  nearly  the  same  impregnable  condition  as  before. 
It  is  also  true  that  the  several  factors  of  the  problem,  the 


MORAL  FREEDOM  *  135 

different  considerations  mainly  influencing  the  manner  of  its 
discussion,  and  the  different  forms  given  to  its  solution  have 
customarily  been  thrown  into  the  shape  of  fundamentally 
irreconcilable  conceptions  and  conclusions.  It  has  thus 
been  left  honeycombed  with  so-called  "antinomies."  And 
perpetually  recurring  antinomies  inevitably  bring  about  an 
attitude  of  discouragement  or  even  of  disgust  toward  the 
problems  which  are  expressed  in  this  fashion. 

Now  I  have  elsewhere  ^  discussed  in  detail  the  subject  of 
"alleged  antinomies."  What  was  there  concluded  as  to 
such  interesting  products  of  ingenious  dialectics  in  general 
is  emphatically  true  of  the  hitherto  current  ethical  anti- 
nomies. Asa  rule,  they  are  not  contradictions  inherent  in 
reason  at  all.  "They  are,  rather,  spurious  contradictions 
which  can  always  be  got  up  when  abstract  conceptions  of 
more  or  less  doubtful  empirical  origin  and  of  perverted  or 
mutilated  construction  are  hypostasized  and  brought  into 
relations  that  are  themselves  either  fictitious  or  abstracted 
inconsiderately  from  the  relations  of  real  individual  things." 
Such  contradictions,  that  is  to  say,  are  not  found  actually 
existent  or  implied,  either  in  the  world  of  things  or  in  the 
constitution  of  human  reason,  or  between  the  world  of  things 
and  the  reason  of  man ;  they  are  the  constructs  of  imperfect 
or  self-deceived  logical  processes.  The  cure  for  such  anti- 
nomies is  neither  indifference,  nor  contempt  of  thinking, 
nor  despair  of  their  removal.  The  cure  for  them  is  a  more 
thorough,  unprejudiced,  and  profound  criticism  of  the  con- 
ceptions involved.  All  this  is  true  whether  these  antithetic 
conceptions  are  evolved  by  the  plain  man's  thinking,  or  by 
the  profound  but  perverse  analysis  of  Kant,  or  by  the  brilliant 
and  subtle  but  fallacious  dialectics  of  Dean  Mansel  or  Mr. 
Bradley.  Limits  of  our  knowledge  may  well  enough,  —  nay ! 
must  of  course  be  recognized;  although  they  must  not  be 
too  hastily  fixed  by  the  method  of  dialectics.     In  respect  of 

1  Philosophy  of  Knowledge,  chap.  xiv. 


136  .  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

the  nature  of  moral  freedom,  and  the  relations  to  the  World 
and  to  God  in  which  man  is  placed  bj  the  possession  or  the 
development  of  such  freedom,  there  is  doubtless  much  which 
the  human  mind  does  not  understand.  Probably  there  is 
much  which  never  will  be  understood.  But  no  one  adequately 
acquainted  with  the  history  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct  can 
assume  that  the  conceptions  involved  in  the  phrase  "  Moral 
Freedom  "  have  all  received  the  criticism  necessary  to  say 
the  last  words  upon  so  involved  a  subject. 

Nor  can  the  student  of  ethics  admit  that  theory  here  is  of 
no  great  practical  importance.  Mr.  Sidgvvick,^  in  his  calm 
and  measured  way,  undertakes  to  "dispel  any  lingering 
doubts  ...  as  to  the  practical  unimportance  of  the  Free 
Will  controversy."  But,  in  his  own  discussion,  he  con- 
stantly confuses  the  question  of  the  immediate  practical 
results  of  Determinism  with  the  question  of  the  possibility 
of  reconciling  the  theory  of  Determinism  with  the  demands 
of  practical  reason,  —  that  is,  with  the  rationality  of  moral 
consciousness.  But  practical  results  of  this  sort  are  scarcely 
to  be  determined  by  a  priori  processes  of  reasoning;  and 
there  are  two  very  potent  influences  at  work  which  make  it 
difficult  or  impossible  to  tell  what  the  practical  results 
would  be  of  having  no  opinions,  or  at  least  convictions, 
respecting  the  questions  in  debate  between  the  Determinist 
and  the  Libertarian.  One  of  these  influences  consists  in 
the  patent  fact  that  scientific  Determinism  is  an  almost 
purely  scholastic  theory;  and  while  the  multitudes  of  men 
are  perfectly  well  aware  of,  and  constantly  take  account  of, 
the  facts  on  which  the  deterministic  theory  relies,  they  do 
not  interpret  these  facts  in  terms  of  this  theory.  Therefore, 
imtil  its  advocates  have  managed  thoroughly  to  convince 
the  multitude  of  its  truthfulness,  we  can  never  know  by 
experience  what  would  be  the  practical  results  of  the  uni- 
versal adoption  of  this  theory.  There  is  absolutely  no 
1  The  Methods  of  Ethics,  book  I,  chap,  v  f. 


MOKAL   FREEDOM  137 

chance  of  ever  converting  the  multitudes  to  a  scientific 
Determinism.  Fatalism  is,  however,  a  religious  doctrine  — 
generally  accepted  among  millions  of  men;  its  practical 
results  may  be  subjected  to  observation,  and  there  cannot  be 
much  doubt  about  their  baleful  character. 

The  second  cause  of  the  difficulty  of  putting  the  fruits  of 
the  deterministic  theory  to  a  test  of  experience  is  that  they 
who  advocate  it  most  strenuously  as  a  scholastic  tenet,  as 
a  rule,  give  it  less  scope  in  a  practical  way  over  their  own 
conduct  than  do  even  the  multitude  of  thoughtless  men  and 
women.  For  they  who  urge  the  speculative  tenet,  that  all 
conduct  is  strictly  determined,  practise  as  though  they  were, 
what  they  really  are,  as  free  as  the  gods  themselves.  By 
constitution,  by  education,  by  circumstances,  they  are  the 
highest  specimens  of  responsible  moral  freedom.  But  to 
pursue  the  inquiry  further  in  this  direction  would  be  to 
employ  a  rather  unserviceable  argumentum  ad  hominem. 

To  say  here  in  one  word  what  will  come  up  for  notice  sub- 
sequently :  —  those  men  who  act  as  though  they  were  "  free  " 
from  all  restraints  of  moral  law  or  influences  from  their  fel- 
low-men, and  those  others  who  regard  themselves  as  "  slaves, " 
strictly  determined  by  either  their  own  impulses  and  passions 
or  by  external  influences,  are  ordinarily  both  alike  bad  and 
immoral.  Both  classes  are  customarily  so  regarded  by  the 
enlightened  critic  of  conduct.  They  constitute,  on  the  one 
hand,  the  gifted,  high-born,  and  interesting  rogues,  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  the  low-bred  and  often  disgusting  rogues,  of 
human  kind ;  —  rogues  are  they  both  apt  to  be,  and  in  such 
manner  that  license  and  slavery  seem  to  meet  in  characters 
that  practise  according  to  either  extreme  of  theory. 

The  attitude  of  undisturbed  satisfaction  toward  any  new 
proposal  to  discuss  the  problem  of  moral  freedom  is  widely 
prevalent  amongst  present-day  writers  on  ethics.  It  is  vir- 
tually the  assumption  that  further  discussion  is  needless  be- 
cause, in  sooth,  the  whole  problem  has  been  once  for  all 


138  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

definitively  settled.  Less  speed  and  assurance  would  be  not 
only  practically  helpful  but  more  genuinely  scientific  here. 
To  be  sure  we  have  writers  —  like  Riehl,^  for  example  —  who 
boldly  assert  that  freedom  is  an  ''  illusion"  comparable  to  the 
illusion  of  the  sun  moving  round  the  earth  ;  and  that 
"Morality  is  the  cognitive  ground  of  Determinism,  while 
Determinism  is  the  real  ground  of  Morality. "  But  to  such 
offhand  assertions  the  counter  claim  of  Caspari,^  for  example, 
is  good  enough  as  an  answer;  for  Caspari  claims  with  far 
more  reason,  that  the  phenomena  on  which  Determinism 
depends  are  Sehein-Phenomena,  or  illusions.  Then  there  is 
the  declaration  of  psychologists  like  Hoffding:^  "Psy- 
chology, like  every  other  science,  must  be  deterministic; 
that  is  to  say,  it  must  start  from  the  assumption  that  the 
causal  law  holds  good  even  in  the  life  of  the  will,  just  as  this 
law  is  assumed  to  be  valid  for  the  remaining  conscious  life  and 
for  material  nature. "  But,  as  I  have  ventured  to  say  else- 
where :  *  "  Such  an  assertion  as  this  may  properly  be  met  with 
the  flattest  kind  of  a  denial.  Psychology  has  absolutely  no 
right  to  make  any  such  assumption. "  Nor  need  the  advocate 
of  moral  freedom  retreat  before  the  encounter  takes  place 
through  fear  of  such  theories  as  that  of  M.  Luys  ^  who  re- 
gards all  psychoses,  including  volitions  and  choices,  as 
determined  by  the  brain  which  dictates  them  to  the  con- 
scious mind  by  a  species  of  incomprehensible  jugglery. 
Neither  a  metaphysical,  nor  a  psychological,  nor  a  psycho- 
physical theory  of  the  will  is  to  be  enforced  or  even  made 
relatively  acceptable  by  any  such  rash  and  wholesale  state- 
ments as  the  foregoing.  No  student  of  ethics  need  hesitate 
boldly  to  call  in  question  the  somewhat  too  overbearing 
temper  and  self-confident  tone  of  this  current  Determinism. 

1  Philosophischer  Kriticismus  (edition  of  1876),  II,  ii,  chap.  3,  219  f. 

2  Grundprobleme  der  Erkenntniss-Thatigkeit  II,  p.  131  f. 
8  Outlines  of  Psychology,  p.  345  f. 

*  Psychology,  Descriptive  and  Explanatory,  p.  627. 
5  The  Brain  and  its  Functions,  passim. 


MORAL  FREEDOM  139 

In  a  word,  although  the  world  is  old  and  the  problem  of 
so-called  "free  will"  has  often  been  examined,  and  always 
been  found  full  of  difficulties  and  dangers  of  misconception 
and  of  practical  import,  there  is,  possibly,  still  more  light  to 
be  thrown  upon  it.  At  any  rate,  there  is  absolutely  nothing 
in  the  most  recent  discoveries,  either  of  psychological  or  of 
physical  science,  which  compels  one  to  regard  the  deter- 
ministic solution  as  the  only  valid  and  scientific  answer 
to  the  problem. 

Within  the  limits  of  the  present  treatise  the  best  course  to 
follow  in  discussing  the  nature  and  development  of  moral 
freedom  is,  I  think,  the  following:  first,  to  recognize  certain 
truths  of  fact  emphasized  by  both  the  deterministic  and  the 
libertarian  positions,  and  to  criticise  the  views  held  by  both 
these  positions,  when  pressed  to  an  extreme;  second,  to 
display  briefly  those  principal  data  of  moral  consciousness 
on  which  an  acceptable  theory  of  moral  freedom  must  be 
based ;  third,  to  examine  the  chief  objections  which  may  be 
brought  against  the  theory;  and,  finally,  to  summarize  the 
entire  problem  and  harmonize,  so  far  as  possible,  the  con- 
flicting elements  and  the  subordinate  conclusions. 

Of  preliminary  considerations  the  following  seem  to  me  the 
most  important.  In  the  first  place,  the  actuality  must  be 
admitted  of  certain  relations  between  the  successive  states 
of  the  Self,  and  between  each  of  those  states  and  the  bodily 
organism,  as  well  as  through  this  organism  between  the  Self 
and  the  changing  conditions  of  external  things.  Such  rela- 
tions are  to  be  found  at  the  very  base  of  human  experience ; 
they  are  necessary  to  the  very  constitution  of  any  experience 
whatever.  It  may  be  said,  the  rather,  that  in  these  relations 
and  in  their  effects  upon  the  Self,  experience  itself  largely 
consists.  Different  words  are  indeed  employed  by  naive 
common-sense  or  by  psychological,  psycho-physical,  and 
metaphysical  theories,  to  express  these  relations.  Among 
such  words  are  the  following:   "cause,"   "occasion,"  "in- 


140  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

duce,"  "influence,"  or   even  "make"  and   "compel."     We 
"  account  for  "  one  state  or  process  of  consciousness  by  refer- 
ring to  another   preceding  state  or   process;   we  refer,  for 
example,  our  present  choice  or  intention  to   the   desire   of 
attaining  some  coveted  end.     Men  continually  inquire  as  to 
the  motives  of  deeds,  the  reasons  and  explanations  of  courses 
of  conduct.     They  apply  similar  language  to  the  relations  in 
which  they  believe  themselves  as  conscious  existences  to  stand 
to  the  conditions  of  their  own  bodily  organism;  it  is  the 
arm  or  the  tooth  that  makes  one  smart  with  pain ;  it  is  the 
condition  of  the  eye  or  ear  which  determines  whether  one 
shall  see  or  hear,  well  or  ill.     In  all  his  social  and  civil 
relations  man  believes  in  the  applicability  of  similar  terms 
to   describe   what   those   relations   are,    and    also   how   the 
experience  of  the  individual  is  dependent  upon  the  actuality 
of  those  relations.     Society  exists  at  all  only  on  the  postulate 
that  human  beings  influence  or  affect  each  other,  and  that 
they  are  in  their  collective  action  and  development  influenced 
or  affected  by  a  great  variety  of  external  conditions.     Upon 
such   facts  as  these  Determinism  bases  its  theory ;   and  in 
discussing  the  problem  of  moral  freedom  no  such  sophistical 
procedure  with   these  facts  as  converts   them  into   merely 
Schein-Phenomena  can  be  adopted.     Nor  can  the  terms  in  use 
among  men  be  interpreted   by  a  scientific  ethics  otherwise 
than  as  bearing  witness  to  the  actuality  of  the  relations  which 
they  signify.     To  interpret  them,  and  not  to  deny  or  sophis- 
ticate them,  is  the  task  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  actuality  must  also  be  admitted 
of  certain  relations  between  the  Self  regarded  as  emotional 
and  impulsive  and  the  Self  regarded  as  willing  and  choosing, 
and  also  between  the  Self  and  its  own  choices ;  and  experi- 
ence forbids  our  interpreting  the  foregoing  words,  when 
applied  to  these  relations,  strictly  after  the  analogy  of  any 
relations  which  can  exist  between  things  and  things,  or 
between  things  and  their  own  states.     Upon  this  point  the 


MORAL  FREEDOM  141 

opinions  and  language  of  men,  as  well  as  their  practice,  are  as 
clear  as  they  are  upon  the  point  just  preceding.  The  univer- 
sal tendency  of  the  untutored  man  is  to  conceive  of  the  rela- 
tions between  things  and  things,  and  between  things  and  his 
own  states,  pretty  strictly  after  the  analogy  of  his  own  experi- 
ence with  himself  as  influenced  by  motives  to  choose  or  to 
avoid  certain  ends.  This  doctrine  of  Animism,  with  its 
language  and  practices,  is  all  the  more  significant  because, 
as  says  Tylor,^  "the  conjunction  of  ethics  and  Animistic 
philosophy,  so  intimate  and  powerful  in  the  higher  culture, 
seems  scarcely  yet  to  have  begun  in  the  lower."  For  the 
tendency  shows  how  permanent  and  universal  is  the  naive 
conviction  that  the  real  relation  between  the  man  and  his 
choices,  or  the  man's  choices  and  the  man's  desires,  is  not 
one  to  be  expressed  in  terms  analogous  to  a  physical  neces- 
sity. A  similar  anthropomorphism  belongs  to  all  stages  of 
human  development.  Indeed,  as  1  have  elsewhere  shown,^ 
the  modern  scientific  view  of  the  Universe  as  a  strictly 
ordered  and  uniform  system  of  causal  connections,  is  no  less 
anthropomorphic  than  is  the  Animism  of  the  savages.  It 
has  the  advantage  of  projecting  into  things,  for  the  explana- 
tion of  man's  experience  with  them,  the  higher  as  well  as  — 
or  instead  of  —  the  lower  factors  of  man's  cognition  of  the 
characteristics  of  selfhood.  But  modern  science  can  validate 
its  anthropomorphism  only  if  it  admits  the  postulate  that 
Causation,  or  Influence,  and  Necessity,  Contingency,  and 
Law,  mean  something  different  when  applied  to  man's  ex- 
perience with  himself  and  to  his  experience  with  physical 
things. 

In  this  connection  I  will  cite  the  sentence  with  which  the 
author  quoted  above  closes  his  discussion  of  the  phenomena 
of  Animism  by  bidding  us  "  consider  how  the  introduction  of 
the   moral  element   separates  the   religions  of  the   world, 

1  Primitive  Culture,  I,  p.  427. 

2  A  Theory  of  Reality  {passim,  and  especially,  chap,  x,  xvi,  xviii). 


142  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

united  as  they  are  throughout  by  one  animistic  principle,  into 
two  great  classes,  those  lower  systems  whose  best  result  is 
to  supply  a  crude  childlike  natural  philosophy,  and  those 
higher  faiths  which  implant  on  this  the  law  of  righteousness 
and  of  holiness,  the  inspiration  of  duty  and  of  love." i  That 
is  to  say,  the  growth  of  culture  and  the  development  of 
morals  does  not  destroy  what  is  true  in  the  one  pervasive 
"animistic  principle;"  the  One  Life  which  manifests  Itself 
in  all  beings  is  assumed  to  be  both  the  Ground  of  a  necessi- 
tated connection  between  Things  and  of  a  development  of 
such  moral  freedom  in  Selves  as  makes  possible  a  keeping 
of  the  "law  of  righteousness  and  of  holiness,  the  inspiration  " 
(not  mechanical  causation)  "of  duty  and  of  love."  Of 
course,  the  language  and  conduct  of  men  must  be  sympa- 
thetically and  profoundly  interpreted  in  order  to  find  in 
them  so  much  of  superior  privilege  and  of  opportunity.  But 
the  most  superficial  interpretation  shows  that  the  universal 
type  of  psychical  relations  is  not  derived  from  man's 
experience  with  a  merely  physical  mechanism. 

The  inevitable  necessity  of  combining  in  one's  conception 
of  moral  freedom  the  two  preceding  somewhat  antithetical 
considerations  leads  the  mind  directly  to  a  third  important 
truth.  We  may  state  the  antithesis  —  which  is  after  all 
more  verbal  than  real  —  in  either  one  of  several  ways.  The 
Self  is  indeed  influenced  in  its  choices  by  its  own  desires  and 
passions;  but  it  is  not  thus  compelled  in  the  same  way  as 
that  in  which  the  action  of  one  thing  compels  the  action  of 
another  thing.  Sometimes,  and  in  certain  pitiful  cases 
almost  or  quite  habitually,  the  Self  is  so  strongly  influenced, 
so  overborne,  as  it  were,  in  its  consideration  of  all  motives 
to  pause  or  to  resist,  that  men  accept  some  such  description 
of  its  action  as  the  following:  "I  could  not  help  it;"  or 
"The  temptation  was  too  strong  and  sudden,  was  greater 
than  I  could  resist. "  When  asked :  —  Why  did  you  choose 
1  Tylor,  ibid.,  ii,  p.  361. 


MORAL   FREEDOM  143 

thus  and  so  ?  or,  Why  was  your  conduct  so  blameworthy,  or 
impolitic  ?  the  answer  sometimes  is :  "  This  passion  or 
impulse  mastered  me;  this  consideration  compelled  me  to 
act."  And  yet  rarely  does  the  explanation,  taken  at  all 
literally,  seem  either  to  the  one  who  makes,  or  to  the  one 
who  receives  it,  quite  satisfactory  or  quite  complete.  The 
untutored  moral  consciousness,  the  crude  and  swift  justice 
of  the  savage,  takes  little  or  no  account  of  excuses  such  as 
these.  And  the  suspicion  that  the  offender  against  the  law 
or  the  custom  is  lying,  when  he  pleads  the  excuse  of  a  causal 
and  necessitated  connection  between  his  motive  and  his 
deed,  is  likely  to  make  the  retribution  no  less  crude  and 
swift.  It  is  only  the  refined  moral  consciousness  which 
modifies  its  feelings  of  reprobation  and  demerit,  and  substi- 
tutes somewhat  of  indulgent  pity  and  compassion  in  their 
stead. 

Now  from  such  mixed  and  conflicting  experiences  as  these 
it  follows  at  once  that  moral  freedom  must  be  considered  as 
a  matter  admitting  of  degrees,  and  as  itself  capable  of  develop- 
ment. In  a  word,  human  beings  are  not  born  free  morally  ; 
neither  do  all  men  possess  at  any  time,  nor  does  any  indi- 
vidual man  possess  at  all  times,  equal  degrees  of  moral  free- 
dom. The  rather  is  such  freedom  to  be  spoken  of  as  an 
acquisition,  dependent  upon  repeated  exercise  of  the  so-called 
power  of  choice,  under  the  principle  of  habit.  Growth  in 
moral  freedom  is  the  development  of  the  Self's  capacity  for 
making  choices. 

It  is  also  manifest  at  once,  in  the  fourth  place,  that  this 
"  capacity  of  the  Self  for  making  choices "  cannot  be  con- 
sidered as  the  function  of  any  one  faculty  or  set  of  faculties. 
The  possession  of  any  degree  of  moral  freedom,  and  the 
development  of  its  higher  and  more  significant  degrees,  are 
dependent  in  all  cases  upon  the  possession  and  development 
of  all  the  faculties  which  go  to  make  up  man's  moral 
nature.    The  problem  of  ethics  is   therefore  not    decided, 


144  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

it  is  not  even  properly  stated,  when  only  the  facts  that  con- 
cern the  purely  voluntary  aspect  of  consciousness  are  consid- 
ered. Neither  mere  arbitrariness  of  will,  nor  machine-like 
and  necessitated  action  of  will,  can  constitute  the  basis  of  a 
truly  moral  freedom.  For,  indeed,  the  problem  includes  much 
more  than  this.  Choices  to  follow  the  ideal  forms  of  that 
which  is  esteemed  morally  good  cannot  be  made  by  a  mere 
fiat  of  will,  whether  wholly  unmotived  or  strictly  determined ; 
the  presence  in  consciousness  of  such  ideals  and  the  conscious 
evaluation  of  them  from  the  moral  point  of  view  is  necessary 
to  their  choice.  I  cannot  will  to  adhere  to  my  feeling  of 
obligation  rather  than  yield  to  my  passion  or  desire,  unless  I 
have  such  feeling  of  obligation ;  nor  can  I  choose  that  course 
of  conduct  which  1  judge  to  be  right  unless  I  am  capable  of  a 
judgment  which  shall  bring  the  conduct  under  the  category 
of  the  right.  And  without  the  powerful  influence  from  the 
feelings  of  moral  approval  and  merit  (and  their  opposites)  it 
cannot  be  contended  that  men  would  ever  attain  to  a  genuine 
moral  freedom.  It  is  in  the  neglect  of  these  considerations 
that  some  of  the  antinomies  which  are  forced  into  the  problem 
of  a  so-called  freedom  of  the  will  have  their  origin.  "Free- 
dom of  the  will "  is,  I  think,  a  term  which  would  better  be 
abandoned  by  ethics.  Moral  freedom  for  the  human  Self  ;  — 
what  is  it  in  fact,  and  essentially,  in  spite  of  its  many  degrees 
of  intensity,  so  to  say,  and  its  different  forms  of  manifestation  ? 
This  is  the  primary  ethical  question.  And  has  moral  freedom 
in  fact  such  a  character  that,  before  the  same  moral  conscious- 
ness which  is  its  own  most  severe  and,  when  well  cultivated, 
intelligent  critic,  we  may  justify  the  conclusion  that  the 
present  social  system  has  in  it  at  least  the  seeds  of  rationality? 
Certain  facts  of  indubitable  experience  exist,  on  the  basis 
of  which  may  be  formed  our  conception  of  the  nature  of  man's 
choices,  and  of  the  part  which  they  play  in  the  moral  life  and 
moral  development.  But  even  these  facts  lose  all  their  highest 
value  and  most  of  their   significance,  when  we  attempt  to 


MORAL  FREEDOM  145 

regard  them  as  separable  from  the  development  of  human  life, 
in  the  individual  and  in  the  race. 

One  word  more  of  preliminary  cautioning  seems  desirable. 
This  has  reference  to  the  chief  fallacy  in  discussing  this  prob- 
lem which  affects  those  metaphysically  inclined.  The  fallacy 
is  that  of  mistaking  conceptions  for  entities,  functions  for 
realities,  relations  for  pre-existent  and  effective  causes.  In  a 
word,  it  is  the  fallacy  of  hypostasizing.  For  example,"  Law  " 
never  does  anything,  or  accounts  for  anything,  —  no  matter 
how  imposing  the  capital  with  which  one  spells  the  word. 
"  Necessity "  creates  no  real  bond  ;  and  "  Chance "  and 
"  Contingency  " —  whether  whispered  with  bated  breath  by 
the  frightened  worshipper  of  the  great  modern  World- 
Machine,  or  boldly  proclaimed  by  the  avowed  enemy  of  such 
a  monstrosity  —  can  no  more  injure  the  existing  arrangement 
of  things  than  the  most  inevitable  Fate  can  conserve  this 
arrangement  by  preventing  man's  interference  with  it  all. 
Ghosts  of  abstractions,  whether  theological  or  scientific, 
whether  redolent  with  the  smell  of  the  tombs  in  which  they 
should  have  been  buried  ages  ago,  or  emitting  whiffs  of  the 
latest  patent  embalming  fluid,  can  effect  neither  good  nor 
harm  outside  of  the  mind  of  man.  And  when  one  is  solemnly 
told  that  the  Law  of  Causation  forbids  this  or  compels  the 
other;  that  human  Self-determination  would  destroy  the 
integrity  of  the  physical  Universe ;  or  that  the  Conservation 
and  Correlation  of  Energy  does  not  admit  of  influences 
•'  passing  over,"  etc.,  from  the  physical  to  the  psychical  realm, 
one  may  always  demand  a  re-examination  of  the  warrant  in 
facts  for  such  sweeping  use  of  ideas  whose  whole  force  is 
only  that  of  the  highest  potency  of  logical  generalization. 

What  now  are  those  facts  of  a  well-nigh  if  not  quite  universal 
human  experience,  from  which  flows  the  conception  of  a  real 
moral  freedom  for  man,  and  to  which  this  conception  must  be 
referred  in  the  effort  to  determine  more  critically  its  rational 
import?    These  facts  may  be  divided  between  two  related 

10 


146  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

but  not  identical  forms  of  consciousness.  They  may  be 
called  the  consciousness  of  ability  and  the  consciousness  of 
imputability,  or  the  consciousness  of  the  Self  as  active  and 
the  consciousness  of  the  Self  as  responsible.  As  these  facts 
appear  in  the  stream  of  the  individual's  conscious  life,  and  as 
they  become  data  for  the  conception  of  man's  moral  freedom, 
they  are  expressed  by  such  language  as  the  following :  ''  I  can," 
and  "  I  know  that  I  can ;  "  and  because  "  I  ought  to  have  (or  I 
ought  not  to  have),  I  am  worthy  of  approval  (or  of  disap- 
proval), and  of  merit  (or  of  demerit)."  In  the  one  case,  the 
Self  contemplates  itself  as  in  the  presence  of  its  own  deed 
and  affirms  that  the  choice  to  do,  or  not  to  do,  in  spite  of  all 
internal  and  external  influence,  is,  nevertheless  its  very  own. 
J  make  my  choice ;  and  the  "I"  that  chooses  is  not  simply 
the  being  that  was  yesterday,  or  even  a  moment  since ;  the 
rather  is  it  the  living,  present,  here-and-now-being  of  the 
Self.  In  the  other  case  the  Self  contemplates  its  ow^n  deed 
as  already  done,  and  affirms  that  this  deed  of  choice  together 
with  a  certain  greater  or  less  amount  of  the  consequences 
following  from  the  deed,  belongs  to  itself  ;  and,  in  consequence, 
so  does  also  the  blame  or  praise,  the  reward  or  punishment. 
I  did  this  thing,  for  it  was  my  choice ;  and  my  living,  present 
Self  doth  reasonably  assume  as  its  own  the  moral  predica- 
ments of  its  own  choosing.  Such,  I  maintain  are  the  facts  of 
human  experience,  when  this  experience  reaches  that  stage 
of  development  which  affords  the  clearest  and  most  trust- 
worthy data  for  a  conception  of  moral  freedom.  But  with 
inferior  degrees  the  same  experience  manifests  itself  as  an 
almost  ceaseless  accompaniment  of,  and  a  substantial  factor 
in,  the  unfolding  of  the  moral  life.  Let  us  now  examine 
somewhat  more  carefully  these  two  classes  of  general  facts 
belonging  to  man's  ethical  consciousness. 

The  general  fact  of  self-activity,  culminating  in  that  highest 
form  of  such  activity  which  is  intelligent  and  deliberate 
choice,  when  taken  —  as  it  always  should  be  —  in  connection 


MORAL  FREEDOM  147 

with  the  equally  general  fact  of  limitations  and  inhibitions  to 
this  activity,  is  expressed  in  such  language  as  "  I  can,"  or  "  I 
cannot."  This  form  of  language  is  appropriate  before  the 
choice  is  made.  After  the  choice,  the  appropriate  declaration 
is  "  I  could  have,"  or  "  I  could  not  have  "  —  done  otherwise 
("  helped  "  it,  or  not,  etc.).  The  psychological  analysis  of  the 
origins  and  development  of  those  complex  conscious  condi- 
tions which  give  the  warrant  to  these  forms  of  expression 
shows  that  the  conditions  themselves  are  continually  present 
in  human  consciousness,  and  belong  essentially  to  the  rise  and 
evolution  of  the  very  conception  of  a  moral  Self,  To  prove 
this  we  have  only  to  evoke  the  aid  of  a  descriptive  psychol- 
ogy which  is  faithful  to  the  facts. 

In  the  infantile  consciousness  there  is  neither  knowledge  of 
the  Self  as  a  doer,  nor  of  other  selves  and  things  as  external 
existences  that  excite  desire  and  solicit  or  impel  the  will. 
But  there  is  that  mixture  of  sensations  and  feelings  which 
stimulates  the  discriminating  consciousness  to  master  its 
environment  both  intellectually  and  practically,  and  which  is 
of  such  a  character  as  to  compel  the  distinction  between  the 
Ego  as  active  and  the  same  Ego  as  passive,  and  so  between 
the  Self  and  the  not-Self  or  other  things.  In  the  one  ever- 
flowing  and  shifting  stream  of  conscious  states  there  are 
changes  which  accentuate  and  define  the  conception  of  our- 
selves as  agents ;  and  there  are  other  changes  which  accentu- 
ate and  define  the  conceptions  of  things  not  ourselves  by 
which  our  agency  is  limited,  and  by  which  we  are  made 
to  suffer  by  being  acted  upon.  This  is  no  occasional  expe- 
rience for  any  man.  This  is  the  universal  and  necessary 
characteristic  of  all  experience.  Under  the  conditions  of 
most  supreme  activity  we  are  self-active  only  in  a  limited 
way ;  we  are  also  solicited  or  deterred,  impelled  or  inhibited  — 
somehow  made  passive  —  by  the  actions  of  other  persons  and 
other  things.  On  the  other  hand,  in  our  most  abject  submis- 
sions, in  our  most  supine  yieldings,  we  are  often,  if  not  gen- 


148  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

erally  or  universally,  conscious  of  a  certain  measure  of 
self-activity  —  of  a  resistance,  which  indicates  the  retention 
of  at  least  a  minimum  of  that  inherent  right  and  power  of 
seZf-control  which  belongs  to  the  very  nature  of  man.  When 
I  suffer  pain,  after  all  it  is  I  that,  having  borne  up  Qsuh  fero) 
against  it,  now  give  way  ;  and  in  the  very  giving  way,  I  may 
assert  my  will  not  to  have  it  so.  And  if  the  total  yielding 
happens  to  be  an  affair  of  ethical  concernment;  if  I  have 
yielded  because  I  felt  I  could  no  longer  suffer  for  righteous- 
ness' sake  ;  then  —  my  conscience  being  well  trained  and  still 
sensitive  —  I  may  feel  most  keenly  that,  after  all,  I  really  could 
have  borne  more ;  I  was  not  wholly  passive  in  being  over- 
borne. The  ideal  of  a  truly  moral  being  is  the  conception  of 
a  Will  which  under  certain  circumstances,  cannot  be  made  to 
choose  to  do  certain  things  by  any  amount  of  conceivable 
suffering. 

The  belief  of  mankind  that  human  wills  can  by  their  ac- 
tivity modify  the  otherwise  extreme  conditions  of  passivity, 
is  proved  by  their  language,  their  judgments,  and  their  be- 
havior. ''Do  not  mind  it,  and  it  will  not  hurt  you  (at  all,  or 
so  much) "  —  this  is  what  nurses  and  mothers  tell  their  chil- 
dren. "  You  shall  learn  to  bear  up  against  that  pain  in  the 
interests  of  some  practical  ideal" — this  is  the  moral  maxim 
which  is  fundamental  with  the  North  American  Indian,  as 
well  as  with  that  Christian  tutelage  out  of  which  the  martyrs 
came.  Even  the  claim,  "  I  cannot  help  it,"  or  "  I  cannot  do 
this,"  has  no  meaning  unless  it  be  interpreted  in  the  light  of 
contrast  with  the  consciousness  of  power  to  do.  The  con- 
sciousness of  potency  is  the  indispensable  postulate  of  the 
consciousness  of  impotency ;  "  cannot "  has  no  meaning  ex- 
cept as  the  foil  of  "  I  can."  ^ 

Neither  past  nor  current  theories  of  the  physiological  basis 

1  For  a  full  discussion  of  the  beginnings  and  development  of  this  conscious- 
ness, see  the  author's  Psychology,  Descriptiye  and  Explanatory,  chap,  xi  and 


MORAL  FREEDOM  149 

or  of  the  psycho-physical  connections  of  this  consciousness 
of  self-activity  should  be  allowed  in  the  least  to  modify  our 
statements  of  the  fundamental  facts  of  experience,  or  to  blur 
the  conception  of  the  import  of  these  facts  in  their  bearing 
upon  the  doctrine  of  moral  freedom.  That  this  feeling  of 
self-activity,  psychologically  considered,  cannot  be  wholly  re- 
solved into  feelings  of  peripheral  tension  and  strain,  etc.,  I 
have  elsewhere  shown  to  be  true.  It  is  in  these  feelings  that 
men  have,  the  rather,  the  grounds  in  experience  for  the  con- 
ception of  an  activity  that  is  limited  and  checked.  But  the 
feeling  of  being  active  is  not,  as  a  mode  of  consciousness  at 
least,  the  feeling  simply  of  being  inhibited  in  activity.  I  will, 
with  difficulty^  indeed ;  but  the  fact  expressed  by  the  words 
"  with  difficulty  "  is  not  the  whole  of  the  fact. 

As  far  as  available  data  exist  for  a  scientific  conclusion,  it 
appears  that  the  physiological  functions  with  which  these 
feelings  of  self -activity  are  correlated  are  not  of  peripheral 
origin.  They  are  not  modifications  of  the  brain's  states 
which  arise  wholly  in  areas  of  tense  muscles,  joints  set 
together,  skin  stretched  tight,  teeth  grinding  on  one  another, 
fists  clenched,  etc.  The  nervous  correlate  of  these  feelings 
is  rather  that  ongoing  chemico-physical  life  which  belongs  to 
the  central  organs,  to  the  controlling  centres  of  the  cerebro- 
spinal and  sympathetic  systems,  and,  through  these  systems,  of 
all  those  bodily  functions  with  which  consciousness  has,  either 
directly  or  indirectly,  anything  to  do.  If  this  is  so,  —  and, 
indeed,  whether  it  be  so  or  not,  —  the  nature  of  the  connec- 
tion between  the  brain-states  and  the  states  of  a  conscious 
self-activity  is  of  so  indeterminate  and  metaphysical  a  char- 
acter that  it  should  not  be  allowed  to  influence  our  pre- 
liminary judgment  as  to  the  character  and  import  of  the 
conscious  facts.  More  sure  than  all  theories  of  idealism, 
of  materialism,  or  of  psycho-physical  parallelism,  stands  the 
indisputable  and  important  datum  of  human  consciousness. 
With  varying  degrees  of   extension  and  intensity,  however 


150  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

limited  and  checked  by  causes  external  or  influences  arising 
within,  man  carries  with  him  an  immediate  awareness  of  his 
own  potency.  He  expresses  his  inmost  experience  by  saying 
"  I  can^^  although  it  may  be  with  pain  and  difficulty,  or  even 
with  doubt  as  to  whether,  after  all,  this  potency  will  endure 
beyond  a  certain  somewhat  indefinite  amount  of  strain. 

The  supreme  exhibition  of  man's  self-activity  is  given  in 
the  phenomenon  of  intelligent  and  deliberate  choice.  The 
wonderful  and  unique  characteristics  which  this  phenomenon 
may  attain  have  been  quite  too  little  insisted  upon  in  modern 
discussions  of  moral  freedom.  The  consciousness  of  motives, 
the  estimate  of  values,  the  appreciation  of  ends,  have  too  often 
been  converted  into  gwasZ-mechanical  processes,  whose  effect 
in  consciousness  has  been  conceived  of  after  the  analogy  of 
the  action  upon  each  other  of  the  parts  of  a  physical  mechan- 
ism. But  Aristotle  long  ago  saw  that  intelligent  deliberation 
guarantees,  and  itself  is,  the  highest  form  of  moral  freedom. 
"  When  we  say,  this  is  chosen  or  purposed,  we  mean  that  it 
has  been  selected  after  deliberation."  ^  An  intelligent  and 
deliberate  choice  is  the  very  opposite  of  an  impulsive  or  im- 
pelled deed  of  will.  The  Self  choosing,  after  deliberation,  is 
the  Self  determining  and  not  determined.  Even  to  say  that 
''after  reflection,  I  am  determined,"  is  to  assert  the  highest 
conceivable  potency  of  a  finite  self-determining  being.  Nor 
can  any  one  imagine  what  larger  amount  of  simple  "  power 
of  will "  should  be  desired  in  the  interests  of  man's  moral  free- 
dom. More  clearness  of  vision,  more  light  on  consequences, 
more  pure  and  noble  intentions,  finer  sensibilities,  higher 
estimates  of  the  more  spiritual  goods,  —  any  and  all  of  these 
acquirements  render  any  man  ''freer"  from  the  risks  and 
dangers,  the  mistakes  and  errors,  of  the  moral  life.  But  I 
fail  to  see  how  the  consciousness  of  self-activity  which  is 
expressed  by  the  "  I  can,"  under  the  most  favorable  circum- 

1  Nic.  Eth.,  Ill,  iii,  17. 


MORAL  FREEDOM  151 

stances,  could  be  made  any  more  convincing  of  the  real  nature 
of  the  transaction  than  it  actually  is. 

The  philosophy  of  conduct  must,  then,  never  omit  to  em- 
phasize this  most  mysterious  and,  in  some  respects,  most 
essentially  incomprehensible  of  psychical  phenomena,  espe- 
cially since  so  much  of  human  experience  inevitably  leads 
the  thought  to  different  and  even  opposed  conclusions  re- 
specting the  nature  of  man,  the  nature  of  things,  and  the 
character  of  the  relations  actually  existing  between  the  two. 
The  psychological  characteristics  of  a  deliberate  choice  are 
best  understood  by  contrasting  this  supreme  act  of  will  with 
every  form  of  impulsive  volition.  In  view  of  the  prevalence 
of  the  teleological  principle  in  all  mental  as  well  as  physical 
life,  there  is  good  ground  for  agreeing  with  M.  Paulhan  ^ : 
"  Every  idea,  .  .  .  every  sentiment,  in  brief  every  psychic 
system  tends  to  complete  itself  by  volitions  and  motor 
phenomena  ;  every  system  has  its  own  will."  Now  if  this 
tendency  itself  were  never  subject  to  a  conscious  and  vol- 
untary check  the  phenomena  of  deliberate  choice  would 
never  occur,  and  moral  freedom  could  never  develop.  But 
deliberation  is  itself  the  conscious  interposition  of  a  check 
until  two  or  more  contending  "  psychic  systems  "  can  have 
their  values  estimated  and  one  of  them  be  adopted  to  the 
exclusion  of  the  others.  So  that  what  is  called  "  delibera- 
tion "  is  itself  a  mixture  of  intellectual  activity  and  inhibitory 
volition;  indeed,  in  all  cases  where  the  questions  deliberated 
have  a  moral  import,  deliberation  is  a  most  significant  piece 
of  conduct.  There  are,  indeed,  not  a  few  cases  where  every 
principle  of  morality  leads  to  the  conclusion  that  action  ought 
to  he  preceded  by  deliberation,  with  its  resulting  clearer  vision 
of  the  end  to  be  aimed  at  and  its  more  precise  estimate  of 
the  values  involved.  The  moral  ideal  is  that  of  a  Self  volun- 
tarily using  its  own  intelligence  to  secure  the  ends  of  that 
conduct  which  is  judged  to  be  right.     Deed  without  judg- 

1  L'Activite  Mentale,  p.  59  f . 


152  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

ment,  or  impulsive  judgment,  is  in  these  cases  morally  wrong 
conduct. 

The  very  effect  of  the  intervention  of  will  and  reason,  or  of 
the  consciously  judging  and  voluntary  mind,  is  totally  to  change 
the  relations  in  which  the  appetites,  passions,  emotions,  and 
desires,  stand  to  the  final  deed  of  will.  So  that  the  will  to 
deliberate  —  "  to  reason  with  one's  self,"  or  "  to  let  the  voice 
of  reason  be  heard,"  as  men  expressively  say  —  often  amounts 
in  the  issue  to  this  :  /  will  the  influe7itial  ideas,  feelings,  and 
desires,  rather  than  allow  these  ideas  and  feelings  and  desires 
to  influence  —  not  to  say,  determine  me.  "  Nothing  can  well 
be  more  shallow  and  misleading,  in  description  and  explan- 
ation of  the  facts  of  consciousness,  as  such,  than  to  regard 
deliberation  as  a  mere  struggle  for  supremacy  in  conscious- 
ness of  ideas  and  feelings  and  desires  that  strictly  determine 
will."  1 

Moreover,  the  volition  itself,  when  issued  after  deliberation 
is  not  psychologically  the  same.  All  the  naive  distinctions 
of  degrees  of  responsibility  and  of  guilt  which  men  customarily 
make,  and  all  the  elaborations  of  acceptable  ethical  theory, 
agree  in  affirming  this.  The  deed  done  with  "  malice  pre- 
pense "  is  peculiarly  one's  own.  If  no  deliberation  intervene, 
then  the  feeling  is  rather  that  of  being  influenced  or  even  car- 
ried away  by  one's  own  impulses ;  if  deliberation  intervene, 
then  the  feeling  is  rather  that  of  a  self-determining  which  one 
of  two  or  more  impulses  shall  be  given  the  influence  which  it 
is  judged  to  deserve.  The  culminating  one  in  this  series  of 
psychical  phenomena  is  that  decision,  or  "  cutting-short"  of 
the  process  of  deliberation,  in  which  will  expresses  itself  as 
the  faculty  distinctive  in  all  making  of  choices.  Or,  to  de- 
scribe the  experience  in  terms  less  abstract  and  technical : 
I  myself  decide  which  of  the  ideas  and  feelings  and  desires 
I  will  make  definitively  and  finally  my  very  own.  The  prob- 
lem whose  solution  has  thus  far  been  only  more  or  less  highly 

1  See  Psychology,  Descriptive  and  Explanatory,  p.  618  f. 


MORAL  FREEDOM  153 

probable,  is  now  for  the  time  being  solved ;  only  the  decision 
decides,  only  the  resolution  resolves  the  problem. 

Undoubtedly,  only  a  relatively  small  amount  of  any  man's 
conduct  results  from,  or  consists  in,  those  intelligent  and 
deliberate  choices  which  exhibit  in  a  complete  and  supreme 
way  all  the  characteristics  that  have  just  been  described. 
But  just  as  undoubtedly  such  choices  are  within  the  limits 
of  man's  capacity,  and  are  actually  made  by  many,  if  not 
frequently  by  all  men.  It  is  not  the  heroes  alone  who  can 
truthfully  declare  with  the  Paracelsus  of  Browning: 


"  I  have  subdued  my  life  to  the  one  purpose 
Whereto  I  ordained  it ;  " 


or,  agam : 


*'  I  have  made  my  life  consist  of  one  idea." 

The  plain  men  and  women  of  the  world,  even  in  the  more  un- 
favorable conditions  and  lower  stages  of  moral  development, 
do  frequently  make  choices  which  are  of  large  subsequent 
effect  upon  their  own  lives  and  upon  the  lives  of  others. 
These  concern  their  habitual  employments,  their  places  of 
residence,  their  marital  and  other  social  connections,  the 
parts  they  play  in  the  life  of  the  tribe  or  larger  community, 
and  even  the  interests  which  affect  the  ongoing  of  the  his- 
tory of  the  race.  "  Will  in  the  narrower  sense,  or  rational 
will,"  says  Paulsen,^  "is  desire  determined  by  purposes, 
principles,  and  ideals."  But  this  is  only  the  partial  truth ; 
Rational  will  is  the  Self  regarded  as  determining  its  own  con- 
duct with  a  view  to  realize  the  ends  that  are  conceived  of  as 
good. 

The  phenomena,  taken  in  their  entirety  and  surveyed  as  im- 
portant factors  in  man's  evolution,  vindicate  his  claim  to  a 
conscious  s^Zf-activity.  The  fact  that  this  activity  is  itself 
dependent  upon  a  development  of  the  mind  with  all  its 
powers,  and  the  fact  that   it  admits  of  a  great  variety  of 

1  System  of  Ethics,  p.  220. 


154  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

degrees,  varying  from  an  impulsive  and  more  strictly  deter- 
mined volition  to  the  most  intelligent  and  deliberate  choice, 
—  these  facts  do  not  destroy  but  only  modify  and  explain  the 
nature  and  import  of  the  claim. 

In  opposition  to  this  view  of  the  fundamental  facts  of  ex- 
perience another  is  sometimes  set  up,  which  regards  the 
phenomena  as  analyzable  into  a  consciousness  of  change  plus 
a  conscious  ignorance  as  to  the  cause  of  the  change.  In  a 
word,  this  form  of  Determinism  sees  an  intellectual  weak- 
ness in  the  very  conscious  experience  in  which  we  find  a  con- 
sciousness of  power.  But  a  potency  of  action  is  not  to  be 
resolved  into  an  impotence  of  knowledge.  Nor  can  the  activity 
of  a  Thing  be  converted  into  the  activity  of  a  Self  merely  by 
assuming  that  the  thing  has  become  conscious  of  what  it  is  do- 
ing, while  remaining  still  ignorant  of  the  reason  why. 

Some  physical  illustration  is  quite  too  often  supposed,  with 
a  kind  of  Hindu  logic,  to  prove  the  case  against  the  advo- 
cate of  a  real  moral  freedom.  Let  us  suppose  an  arrow  in 
its  flight  to  become  conscious  of  its  own  buoyancy,  speed,  and 
direction,  and  to  feel  the  influences  which  really  come  from 
earth  and  air,  without  however  knowing  anything  about  the 
bow  and  the  strong  arm  that  set  it  in  motion,  or  the  forces 
and  laws  of  gravity  and  of  atmospheric  pressure.  Might  not 
this  conscious  Thing  imagine  itself  to  be  soaring  aloft  of  its 
own  free  will,  to  be  voluntarily  going  straight  for,  or  deviating 
from,  the  mark  with  feelings  and  desires  appropriate ;  and, 
finally,  might  it  not  rejoice  in  and  esteem  praiseworthy  its  own 
success  on  hitting  the  "  bull's-eye,"  or  drop  to  ground  quite 
short  of  the  target  with  feelings  of  disappointment  and  moral 
shame?  But,  surely,  it  does  not  require  a  past  master  of 
psychology  to  prick  this  iridescent  bubble,  or  a  great  inter- 
preter of  the  language  of  the  human  soul  to  discover  the 
fallacy  of  such  mythological  conceits.  Let  us  make  a  com- 
plete Self  out  of  this  conscious  arrow.  And  now  under  the  prin- 
ciple of  suflicient  reason  the  "  Thing  "  does  account  to  itself 


MORAL  FREEDOM  155 

for  its  own  speed  and  direction  as  partially  due  to  causes  that 
lie  outside  of  itself ;  its  tendency  to  decline  from  the  straight 
course  it  ascribes  to  the  pressure  of  the  invisible  wind; 
and  the  necessity  to  put  forth  more  of  its  own  effort  to  keep 
aloft  it  attributes  to  the  down-pulling  of  the  earth  beneath. 
And  yet  this  conscious  arrow  refuses  to  credit  the  conclusion 
that  the  wholly  sufficient  reason  for  its  action  resides  outside  of 
its  own  present,  self-determining  choice ;  and  it  maintains  this 
refusal  to  the  last,  in  spite  of  all  the  cogent  pleadings  of  a 
deterministic  philosophy.  Add  all  these  potencies  of  intellect 
and  will,  and  not  a  few  others,  together  with  the  ethical  feel- 
ings of  man,  to  this  conscious  arrow,  and  the  conscious  arrow 
has  become  a  conscious  Self,  with  all  the  rights,  duties,  and 
moral  ideals  of  such  a  rational  and  free  being.  As  to  the 
possibility  of  so  wonderful  a  transmigration  of  souls,  I  am 
quite  willing  to  leave  it  to  the  most  ardent  and  consistent 
advocates  of  the  theory  of  psycho-physical  parallelism  to 
discuss. 

But  to  drop  so  imperfect  and  even  absurd  an  illustration  ; 
it  distinctly  is  not  true  to  the  facts  that  ignorance  of  the  pre- 
cise influences  operative  is  any  measure  of  the  willingness  to 
attribute  to  the  Self  the  power  of  self-determination  ;  or,  on 
the  other  hand,  that  knowledge  of  the  influences  actually  at 
work  upon  the  man  necessarily  diminishes  at  all  the  well- 
grounded  belief  in  his  freedom.  Suppose,  for  example,  that 
after  much  deliberation  of  the  pros  and  cons  I  decide  to  take 
a  certain  journey.  After  making  the  decision,  I  know  quite 
clearly  the  relatively  narrow  set  of  influences  which  tended 
to  induce  me  to  go  abroad  or  to  stay  at  home  ;  I  am  still  able 
quite  accurately  to  describe  the  amount  of  consideration 
which  I  gave  to  them  in  making  up  my  mind  to  the  final 
choice  ;  but,  all  the  same,  or  even  all  the  more,  I  remember 
that  I  was  conscious  of  the  ability  to  choose  and  that  I  did 
choose  with  this  consciousness  still  pervading  my  deed  of  will. 
Now,  on  the  other  hand,  suppose  that  I  am  investigating  a 


156  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

complicated  problem  in  cerebral  physiology.  For  example: 
What  are  the  causal  influences  that  determine  the  production 
of  so-called  "  protagon  "  in  the  human  brain  ?  I  do  not  know. 
I  have  not  the  slightest  doubt,  however,  that  they  are  indefi- 
nitely more  complicated  than  those  which  determined  my 
clioice  to  take  the  journey.  I  may  doubt  whether  all  the 
physico-chemical  causes  which  enter  into  the  production  of 
protagon  will  ever  be  known  to  the  student  of  physiological 
chemistry.  But  do  I  doubt  that  every  atom  and  molecule  in 
that  compound,  and  the  whole  constitution  of  the  compound, 
was  strictly  determined  and  did  not  anywhere  admit,  on  the 
part  of  its  elements  or  its  totality  any  self-determining  choice  ? 
Not  for  a  moment ;  not  in  the  least.  Why,  then,  this  differ- 
ence ?  It  is  not  a  difference  in  amounts  of  knowledge  ;  it  is 
plainly  a  more  fundamental  difference.  It  involves  all  the 
enormous  difference,  based  on  indubitable  facts  of  experience, 
between  my  conception  of  the  nature  of  a  Thing  and  my 
conception  of  the  nature  of  a  Moral  Self. 

The  other  class  of  facts  upon  which  the  conception  of  moral 
freedom  is  based  has  been  called  the  consciousness  of  imputa- 
bility.  The  bearing  of  these  facts  upon  the  conception  of 
moral  freedom  may  be  more  briefly  stated  in  view  of  what 
has  already  been  said  touching  allied  facts.  Some  one  is 
ethically  responsible  for  all  conduct;  some  one  is  to  be 
approbated  if  the  conduct  is  good,  or  disapproved  if  the  con- 
duct is  bad  ;  and  for  every  good  or  bad  piece  of  conduct  some 
one  deserves  to  be  treated  accordingly.  All  over  the  world, 
when  good  or  bad  deeds  transpire,  search  is  at  once  made  for 
the  person,  or  persons,  whose  the  deeds  are,  so  that  to  them 
they  may  be  attributed  as  their  very  own.  And  to  oivn  the 
conduct  —  whether  jointly  or  severally  or  exclusively  —  is  to 
establish  a  sort  of  right  to  its  appropriate  treatment  of  praise 
or  blame,  of  reward  or  punishment ;  it  is  also  to  lay  upon 
society  the  duty  of  this  appropriate  treatment.  In  a  word,  to 
the  Self,  in  a  special  and  peculiar  way,  belong  such  of  its 


MORAL  FREEDOM  157 

individual  actions  or  habitual  modes  of  behavior  as  consti- 
tute its  conduct  and  character ;  this  attribution  of  the  con- 
duct makes  ethically  proper  the  imputation  of  praise  or  blame, 
and  the  bestowal  of  reward  or  the  infliction  of  punishment. 

Few  will  doubt  that  men  are  in  general  ready  to  claim  for 
themselves  the  credit  and  the  reward  which  are  due  to  the 
good  deeds  they  are  convinced  they  have  done.  Even  the 
most  genuinely  humble  Christian,  in  his  most  sincere  ascrip- 
tion to  God  of  whatever  glory  may  belong  to  any  of  his  own 
good  deeds,  still  feels  that  his  fellow-men  ought  also  to 
recognize  in  their  treatment  of  him  that  these  good  deeds 
were  indeed  his  own.  If  God  did  them,  —  and  to  Him  be  all 
the  glory,  —  still  they  were  done  in  and  through  himself. 
Just  as  little  doubt  is  there  that  men  generally  disapprove 
and  blame  and  desire  to  punish  those  who  have  wronged 
them ;  and  that  they  express  with  good  conscience  this  dis- 
approval and  blame,  if  not  a  more  explicit  notice  of  demerit. 
And  the  fact  that  they  are  not,  as  a  rule,  so  strict  in  their 
judgment,  or  so  warmly  convicted  of  the  rationality  of  this 
universal  mode  of  procedure,  when  their  own  selves  must 
suffer  thereby,  is  to  be  accounted  for  in  obvious  ways.  In 
the  case  of  those  who  have  the  highest  degree  of  ethical  cul- 
ture, moreover,  we  not  infrequently  find  the  disposition  to 
make  the  most  unsparing  application  of  this  working  of  moral 
consciousness  to  their  own  case.  The  bad  things  they  them- 
selves do  are,  of  all  bad  conduct,  the  nearest  and  most  intui- 
tively disapproved  and  punished  by  themselves.  They  are  of 
all  men  least  disposed,  in  cowardly  and  self -deceitful  fashion,  to 
retreat  before  the  condemnation  of  conscience  or  to  throw  the 
blame  and  the  baneful  consequences  of  their  own  wrongdoing 
off  upon  circumstances  or  upon  other  men.  And  such  per- 
sons are  the  most  trustworthy  witnesses  to  those  facts  of 
moral  consciousness  which  have  this  import.  All  conduct, 
with  its  accompaniments  and  consequences  of  approval  and 
disapproval,  merit  and  demerit,  is  imputable  to  some  Self  as 
to  its  author  and  source. 


158  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

The  phenomena  of  ethical  pride  and  shame,  of  the  claim 
made  by  the  pure  conscience  and  the  remorseful  consciousness 
to  be  self-rewarded  or  self-punished,  even  if  society  neglect  its 
duty,  or  fail  through  ignorance  to  administer  reward  or  pun- 
ishment, are  not  peculiar  to  any  tribe  or  to  any  era  of  ethical 
development.  The  man  of  honor  in  Old  Japan  committed 
hara-kiri,  when  his  wrong  conduct  toward  one  of  a  lower  class 
was  not  punishable  as  a  crime  in  the  eyes  of  the  law.  His 
honor  called ;  he  punished  himself.  On  this  point  the  sanc- 
tions of  the  religious  consciousness  reinforce  the  moral  feeling 
of  the  imputability  of  conduct.  Hence  not  only  the  god  who 
is  friendly  should  enjoy  a  sacrifice  as  a  gift,  but  the  god 
who  has  become  offended,  must  be  propitiated  by  a  sacrifice. 
Criminals  have  often  surrendered  themselves  in  order  that  the 
cravings  of  their  own  conscience  for  punishment  might  be 
appeased ;  and  sinners  who  become  penitent  get  satisfaction 
in  doing  some  sort  of  penance.  Even  the  Zulus  have  the 
proverb  :  "  When  a  fish  is  killed  its  own  tail  is  inserted  in 
its  own  mouth  "  (said  of  people  who  reap  the  reward  of  their 
deeds). 

The  same  view  of  the  imputability  of  conduct  is  taught  by 
the  universal  customs  and  the  language  of  men  as  related  to 
one  another's  deeds.  Whatever  one  may  think  about  the 
morality  of  revenge,  one  cannot  forget  the  significance  of  the 
indisputable  fact  that  men  regard  injuries  done  them  by  their 
fellowmen  as  demanding  a  different  sort  of  treatment  from 
that  which  is  given  to  injuries  done  by  things  or  by  the  lower 
animals.  "  Confucius  made  it  a  duty  for  a  son  to  slay  his 
father's  murderer,  just  as  Moses  insisted  on  a  strictly  re- 
taliatory penalty  for  bloodshed."  ^  Among  the  Fijians  the 
duty  of  revenge  passes  from  father  to  son,  and  from  the  son 
to  th«  nearest  relation,  according  to  the  maxim:  "Let  the 
shell  of  the  oyster  perish  by  reason  of  years,  and  to  these 
add  a  thousand  more,  still  my  hatred  shall  be  hot."     And 

1  Comp.  J.  A.  Farrer,  Primitive  Manners  and  Customs,  p.  80. 


MOKAL  FREEDOM  159 

even  the  modern  Italian  extols  the  sweetness  of  revenge  and 
declares  it  a  morsel  fit  for  God.  Between  the  tribes  of  the 
uncivilized  North  American  Indians,  and  between  the  fami- 
lies of  the  scarcely  less  uncivilized  portions  of  our  own  South, 
feuds  and  blood-revenge  illustrate  this  fact  of  imputabilitj  in 
the  form  which  makes  a  sacred  duty  of  vengeance.  Nor  is 
the  strength  of  this  fact  diminished  when  the  lower  stage  of 
morals  has  been  transcended  and  the  beautiful  sentiment  of 
Persia  has  prevailed,  which  makes  it  the  sign  of  a  mean  spirit 
to  take  private  revenge  for  an  injury,  but  a  manly  thing  to 
return  good  for  evil ;  or  when  the  yet  clearer  and  more  pro- 
nounced declarations  of  the  sermon  on  the  mount  have  been 
adopted  as  the  law  of  social  life.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
opinion  grows  with  all  the  growth  of  the  common  moral 
status,  that  to  withhold  praise  and  approbation  from  him  who 
deserves  it,  as  well  as  to  bestow  them  selfishly  where  they 
are  not  deserved,  are  two  kindred  forms  of  evil  conduct. 
Indeed,  this  may  amount  to  saying  that  ingratitude  (for  pub- 
lic as  well  as  private  benefits  —  and  every  good  deed  is  a 
public  benefit)  and  sycophancy  are  among  the  basest  of  vices. 
The  same  truth  is  even  more  clearly  set  forth  by  the  exist- 
ence and  execution  of  the  laws  in  all  civilized  states  and 
nations ;  ^s  well  as  by  much  of  that  appeal  to  force  which  is 
made  to  settle  matters  of  conduct  in  dispute  between  states 
or  nations, — the  so-called  "  arbitrament  of  war."  For  men 
can  scarcely  fight  as  wild-cats  and  tigers  do.  Although  there 
are  few  wars  of  human  history  where  either  party  has  had 
a  clear  title  to  a  perfect  righteousness  of  conduct  in  the  mat- 
ter under  dispute,  and  no  wars  where  both  parties  have  had 
such  a  title,  yet  there  are  fewer  still  where  there  has  been 
made  no  pretence  —  however  hypocritical  or  mistaken  —  of 
some  right  to  be  asserted  or  some  wrong  to  be  redressed. 
But  all  such  claims  bear  witness  to  the  same  universal  belief 
in  the  imputability  of  human  conduct.  The  barest  pretence 
of  justice  carries  with  it  this  same  irresistible  belief. 


160  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

There  are,  indeed,  many  curious  customs  and  even  laws 
which  show  through  what  various  and  shifting  phases  the 
conception  of  the  more  precise  nature  of  man's  responsibility 
for  his  conduct  may  pass.  Most  of  these,  however,  may  be 
explained  as  due  to  imperfect  conceptions  of  personality,  of 
the  selfhood  which  the  individual  is  considered  to  have. 
The  history  of  man's  ethical  development  seems  to  show  that 
belief  in  the  imputability  of  conduct  is  even  more  constant 
than  are  the  conceptions  of  selfhood  which  he  develops. 
The  conception  of  selfhood  is  a  relatively  complex  affair. 
It  undergoes  important  modifications  with  the  growth  in 
culture  and  in  experience  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race. 
Thus  the  individual  Self  may,  on  the  one  hand,  become  merged 
and  almost  lost  in  the  vague  notion  of  a  selfhood  for  the 
family,  the  tribe,  or  the  state.  Since  the  other  members  of 
the  body  domestic,  social,  political,  suffer  sympathetically 
when  any  one  member  suffers,  by  a  not  unnatural  and  useful 
fiction  they  are  thought  of  as  sharing  in  the  goodness  or 
badness  of  each  other's  conduct  and  in  "  the  desert  to  be 
treated  accordingly."  But  the  same  conception  may,  on  the 
other  hand,  become  so  contracted  as  to  be  identified  with  some 
one  of  its  own  good  or  bad  passions,  affections,  and  impulses ; 
or  even  with  some  one  of  those  bodily  members  that  are  the 
natural  instruments  for  executing  the  will  as  moved  by  these 
passions,  affections,  and  impulses. 

This  vague  and  expansive  conception  of  selfhood  accounts 
in  part  for  the  custom  of  extending  to  the  whole  family  or 
tribe  the  guilt  of  an  individual  member  and  of  satisfying  the 
demands  of  justice  by  executing  the  penalty  upon  any  other 
member  of  the  same  family  or  tribe.  Thus  the  Thlinkeet 
Indians,  if  they  cannot  catch  the  actual  doer  of  a  crime,  kill 
one  of  his  family  or  tribe  instead.  According  to  the  native 
Samoan  law  a  plaintiff  might  seek  redress  for  the  murder  of 
one  of  his  own  relatives  "  from  the  brother,  son,  or  other  rela- 
tive of  the  guilty  party.'*    Among  the  natives  of  Australia, 


MORAL  FREEDOM  161 

when  a  crime  was  committed,  and  especially  if  the  culprit  es- 
caped, only  persons  unconnected  with  the  family  believed  them- 
selves to  be  safe,  until  some  one  had  expiated  the  crime.  It  is 
not  long  since  the  English  law  avenged  itself  on  the  successful 
suicide  by  punishing  his  relatives ;  and  not  so  very  much 
longer  since  it  incarcerated  or  fined  the  husband  for  an 
assault  committed  by  his  wife.  To-day  in  many  Western 
sections  of  this  country  vengeance  for  a  crime  committed  by 
some  one  or  more  Indians  is  executed  by  killing  as  many 
as  possible,  even  innocent  members  of  the  same  tribe  or  of 
other  tribes,  —  and  this  not  as  a  necessary  but  awful  deter- 
rent simply,  but  rather  with  the  satisfaction  of  a  good  con- 
science. And  do  not  the  most  Christian  nations  constantly 
disgrace  their  Christian  name  by  treating  the  so-called  in- 
ferior races  with  the  same  crude,  selfish,  and  degraded,  but 
awfully  potent  conceptions  of  personal  responsibility  for 
wrong-doing  ? 

The  thoughtful  student  of  man's  moral  evolution  cannot 
fail  to  find  a  certain  basis  in  reality  for  these  misguided  ways 
of  asserting  the  imputability  of  conduct.  Some  one  has  got 
to  suffer,  and  some  one  ought  to  suffer,  if  any  wrong  has 
been  done.  And  so  much  of  a  sort  of  solidarity  is  there  to 
the  connections  of  individual  men,  in  the  family,  the  tribe, 
the  state,  or  the  race,  that  the  suffering  cannot  be  confined  to 
the  personality  of  the  criminal  alone.  Moreover,  it  ought  not 
to  be  so  confined.  Nor  is  the  reason  for  this  "  ought-not " 
purely  a  matter  of  expediency  or  of  social  policy.  In  their 
social  connections  men  act  with  a  kind  of  corporate  responsi- 
bility. This  fact  makes  the  precise  manner  of  the  just  dis- 
ti'ibution  of  praise  and  blame,  reward  and  punishment,  most 
difficult ;  —  so  difficult  indeed,  that  anything  approaching  per- 
fect justice  is  an  impossibility.  The  question  of  Cain  :  "  Am 
I  my  brother's  keeper  ? "  has  always  been  answered  affirma- 
tively by  the  prevailing  judgment  and  actual  practice  of  the 
race.    As  ethical  enlightenment  increases,  and  "  good  will " 

11 


162  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

becomes  more  dominant,  the  conception  of  Selfhood  becomes 
truer  and  more  definite,  and  the  points  for  the  just  and 
beneficent  attachment  of  responsibility  become  more  clearly 
discerned. 

The  important  conclusion,  therefore,  from  this  general 
fact  of  the  imputability  of  conduct  may  be  stated  somewhat 
as  follows  :  The  fact  itself  belongs  to  the  most  fundamental 
and  unchanging  phenomena  of  man's  moral  consciousness. 
It  guarantees  the  individual  and  corporate  responsibility  of 
men  to  one  another,  for  their  conduct  and,  to  a  certain  ex- 
tent for  the  consequences  of  conduct.  It  implies  the  irresis- 
tible belief  that  conduct  belongs  to  the  Self,  is  the  product  of 
self-activity ;  thus  conduct  can  be,  must  be,  and  ought  to  be, 
followed  by  praise  or  blame,  reward  or  punishment.  But 
these  rational  sequences  of  conduct  are  themselves  justifiable 
at  the  bar  of  reason  itself  only  in  view  of  the  postulate  of 
moral  freedom.  And,  in  fact,  these  sequences  are,  by  all 
men  and  everywhere,  justified  in  this  way.  For  they  are 
universally  regarded  as  belonging  to  the  very  essentials  of 
morality  as  a  rational  affair.  Wrong-doing,  since  it  is  the 
product  of  a  being  possessed  of  moral  freedom,  ought  to  be 
blamed  and  punished ;  but  right  conduct  is  reasonably  en- 
titled to  praise  and  to  a  reward  of  merit.  For  the  total  com- 
plex fact  is  not  simply  the  fact  of  conduct  imputed  and  treated 
accordingly ;  it  is  rather  the  fact  of  conduct  imputable  and  so 
reasonably  treated  accordingly. 

What  now  is  the  picture  which  these  facts  of  universal 
moral  consciousness  both  authenticate  and  require  ?  It  is 
the  picture  of  Man  as  self-determining;  it  is  the  picture  of 
man  as  a  rational  free  Self.  Negatively  described,  it  is  the 
picture  of  a  being  that  is  not  wholly  determined  either  by 
environment  and  external  stimuli  and  impulses,  or  by  his 
own  emotional  and  impulsive  states  or  past  habits  of  action. 
Positively  described  again,  it  is  the  picture  of  a  being  that, 
under  differing    circumstances   and   with  varying    degrees, 


MOKAL   FREEDOM  163 

develops  a  power  which  reaches  its  culminating  manifesta- 
tion in  its  own  peculiar  form  of  intelligent  and  deliberate 
choice ;  and  this  power  is  the  whole  Self  actively  determin- 
ing its  own  conduct.  Perhaps  nothing  truer  has  ever  been 
said  upon  this  subject  than  the  following  sentences  of  Aris- 
totle ^ :  "  Therefore  virtue  depends  upon  ourselves ;  and  vice 
likewise.  For  where  it  lies  with  us  to  do,  it  lies  with  us  not 
to  do.  Where  we  can  say  No,  we  can  say  Yes.  If  then  the 
doing  of  a  deed  which  is  noble  lies  with  us,  the  not-doing 
it,  which  is  disgraceful,  lies  with  us ;  and  if  the  not-doing, 
which  is  noble,  lies  with  us,  the  doing,  which  is  disgraceful, 
also  lies  with  us.  But  if  the  doing  and  likewise  the  not- 
doing  of  noble  or  base  deeds  lies  with  us,  and  if  this  is,  as 
we  found,  identical  with  being  good  or  bad,  then  it  follows 
that  it  lies  with  us  to  be  worthy  or  worthless  men."  "  We 
are  ourselves  joint  causes^  in  a  way^  of  our  {virtuous  or 
vicious)  habits. 

Even  those  advocates  of  Determinism  who  venture  to  charge 
this  universal  opinion  —  We  ourselves  determine  our  conduct 
and  help  to  make  our  own  character  —  with  being  an  illusion^ 
cannot  well  controvert  the  fact  that  this  "  illusion  "  underlies 
and  interpenetrates  the  whole  moral  structure  of  human  insti- 
tutions. It  is  an  illusion  of  the  race,  a  mutually  tolerated  and 
encouraged  self-deceit  that  one  cannot  say  afflicts,  but  the 
rather  conserves  the  higher  spiritual  and  ethical  interests  of  all 
mankind.  But  no  warning  to  the  philosophy  of  conduct  can 
easily  be  more  significant  than  that  which  bids  the  reflective 
thinker  beware  how  he  passes  lif^jhtly  over  to  the  realm  of 
illusion  facts  of  experience  like  these.  It  might  well  seem 
far  better  to  toss  some  of  his  own  fixed  ideas,  some  of  his 
boasted  scientific  (sic)  conclusions,  over  into  "  the  death- 
kingdom  of  abstractions." 

There  are  many  of  the  transactions  which  take  place  between 
things  and  things,  and  between  selves  and  things,  that  are 

1  Nic.  Eth.,  Ill,  V,  2  and  20. 


164  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

certainly  known  not  to  be  "  free  "  in  any  of  tlie  several  mean- 
ings which  ethics  can  possibly  attach  to  this  word.  Indeed, 
modern  science  has  a  well-founded  belief  that  things,  if  left  to 
themselves,  uniformly  behave  in  ways  which  are  strictly  deter- 
mined by  the  natures  and  relations  of  the  very  things  in  whose 
changes  the  observed  uniform  behavior  consists.  I  say  natures 
as  well  as  relations ;  the  meaning  of  this  declaration  will  be 
made  clearer  and  the  application  of  it  more  pertinent  at  a  later 
stage  of  the  discussion.  For  the  very  term  "  nature  "  is  one 
which  science  is  obliged  to  use  in  order  to  cover  up  a  vast 
amount  of  ignorance,  and  as  a  sort  of  comfortable  locus  for  that 
unavailable  fund  of  mystery  which  investigation  always  leaves 
on  hand,  no  matter  to  what  extent  knowledge  of  so-called  causes 
has  been  able  to  find  its  way.  Or,  to  put  the  solution  of  the 
whole  problem  into  one  sentence:  Science  finds  the  total 
explanation  of  all  the  physical  changes  in  the  world  in 
the  assumption  that  all  things  are  from  the  beginning 
strictly  determined  by  their  own  natures  how  to  behave  — 
each  in  its  own  same  way  —  when  in  determinate  identical 
relations  with  other  things.  This  is  not,  indeed,  the  naive, 
natural  way  in  which  men  have  always  explained  the  physical 
changes  with  which  their  experience  has  made  them  familiar. 
It  is  not  the  way  in  which  millions  of  men  now  explain 
these  changes.  It  is,  however,  the  way  in  which  modern 
science  insists  upon  explaining,  at  the  very  least,  all  physical 
changes. 

It  will  be  found  that  all  the  objections  to  that  view  of  moral 
freedom  which  I  am  advocating  have  their  source  in  the  so- 
called  "  principle  of  causation."  But  they  come  from  its  mis- 
conception and  its  consequent  misapplication.  The  objections 
must  be  met  by  correcting  the  misconception  and  by  determin- 
ing the  true  application  of  the  principle.  And  if  we  have  to 
leave  a  large  residuum  of  ignorance  as  to  specific  causes  to  be 
located  in  the  mysterious  nature  of  the  Self ;  if  we  have,  indeed, 
to  end  the  controversy  by  saying  that  the  very  nature  of  man 


MORAL  FREEDOM  165 

consists  largely  in  his  developing  the  mysterious  power  of  self- 
determination,  still  the  confession  is  neither  so  extraordinary 
nor  so  damaging  to  a  reasonable  Libertarianism  as  it  might 
at  first  appear.  For  the  principle  which  controls  the  conscious 
and  rational  development  of  a  morally  constituted  being  is  not 
the  principle  of  causation  in  the  complete  mechanical  form  in 
which  modern  science  applies  it  to  the  changes  of  things. 

There  are,  however,  two  ways  of  controverting  moral  free- 
dom with  the  principle  of  causation  ;  and  these  two  ways  differ 
largely  because  they  regard  the  principle  itself  as  resting  upon 
experience  in  two  different  ways.  Thus  the  objections  which 
arise  may  take  either  one  of  the  two  following  forms :  (1)  em- 
pirical and  inductive,  or  objections  from  facts ;  and  (2)  deduc- 
tive and  a  priori,  or  objections  coming  straight  from  the  claim 
that  the  principle  of  causation  —  as  interpreted  by  the  objec- 
tor —  is  of  universal  and  demonstratively  valid  applicability. 
The  one  class  of  objections  points  to  our  experience  with  facts, 
and  claims  simply.  It  is  so ;  the  deeds  of  will,  including  the 
most  intelligent  and  deliberate  choices,  are  all  strictly  deter- 
mined by  their  antecedents  and  concomitants.  The  other  class 
of  deterministic  theorists  are  bolder ;  they  venture  to  affirm : 
It  must  be  so;  the  universal  and  unalterable  principles  of 
reason  are  on  our  side ;  and  we  do  not  need  to  advance  con- 
vincing proofs  in  the  way  of  facts.  Let  us,  however,  take 
each  position  in  order,  and  advance  to  the  citadel  of  what 
Kant  would  call  an  "  apodeictic  "  stronghold  over  gaps  in 
the  walls  of  its  empirical  surroundings. 

It  is  with  no  little  amazement  that,  when  one  examines  the 
Determinism  which  affirms  for  itself  a  solid  basis  in  fact,  one 
finds  it  hopelessly  divided  against  itself  on  the  most  important 
matters,  both  theoretical  and  practical.  Indeed,  there  is 
scarcely  need  to  call  upon  Libertarianism  to  disprove  the 
very  substance  of  the  deterministic  argument  so  long  as  these 
two  schools  of  Determinists  contradict  each  other  both  in  their 
affirmations  and  in  their  denials.     The  form  which,  without 


166  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

disrespect,  may  be  called  "  Old  Fashioned  Determinism," 
maintains  that  the  sufficient  reason  for  all  deeds  of  will  must 
be  found  in  antecedent  states  of  consciousness.  It  cultivates 
an  elaborate  mathematics  dealing  with  the  dynamical  theory 
of  "  motives,"  or  those  mainly  emotional  states  of  conscious- 
ness which  have  different  degrees  of  potency  to  move  (or  de- 
termine in  a  2'^asz-mechanical  way)  the  Will.  Men  choose 
always  in  accordance  with  —  and  so  as  determined  by  —  the 
appetite,  passion,  desire,  sentiment,  or  estimate  of  some  form 
of  the  good,  which  for  them  at  the  time  of  choosing  is  the 
most  forceful,  the  most  of  a  real  moving  power.  In  a  word, 
whatever  form  of  expression  may  be  selected  to  represent  the 
facts  of  experience,  the  underlying  assumption  is  this :  All 
psychoses,  including  deeds  of  will  and  even  the  most  intelli- 
gent and  deliberate  choices,  stand  to  antecedent  psychoses  in 
the  relation  of  effects  to  causes.  But  the  form  of  Determinism 
which  I  will  venture  to  call  "■  New  Fashioned  "  (although  its 
more  appropriate  name  is  the  now  almost  universally  rejected 
and  opprobrious  title,  "  Materialism  ")  denies  that  psychoses 
can  really  influence,  or  cause,  each  other  in  any  case  or  under 
any  circumstances.  For  states  of  consciousness,  say  its  advo- 
cates, are  not  realities  and  cannot  act  dynamically  upon  each 
other.  The  real  cause  of  them  all  is  the  succession  of  chemico- 
physical  changes  which  goes  on  in  the  nervous  system  ;  and 
especially,  the  succession  of  brain-states.  Psychoses,  whether 
appearing  to  us  as  motives  or  deeds  of  will,  are  mere  phenom- 
ena —  phenomena  of  the  brain.  And  just  as  we  do  not  say 
of  the  successive  puffs  of  steam  from  the  locomotive  —  ^,  B, 
C,  D,  .  ,  ,  iV —  that  A  causes  B,  and  B  causes  (7,  and  so  on 
until  iVis  reached  ;  but  we  hold  that  the  entire  series,  A,  B, 
C,  D,  ,  .  ,  N,  is  explained  by  the  succession  of  dynamical 
changes  which  go  on  in  the  boiler,  steam-chest,  etc.,  of  the 
locomotive,  under  the  influence  of  surrounding  temperature, 
atmospheric  pressure,  etc.,  —  so  ought  we  to  explain  the  succes- 
sion of  psychoses.     Whatever  may  be  their  apparent  character 


MORAL  FREEDOM  167 

in  consciousness,  we  must  explain  them  by  the  only  causal 
chain  of  occurrences  which  can  possibly  be  considered  as 
effective  in  reality,  —  namely,  the  succession  of  cerebral 
neuroses.  In  a  word,  psychoses  cannot  cause  or  influence 
psychoses ;  all  psychoses,  as  respects  their  nature  and  their 
order  in  the  series,  are  caused  by  neuroses. 

Both  these  forms  of  the  deterministic  hypothesis  have  cer- 
tain undoubted  facts  of  experience  on  their  side  ;  and  every 
theoretical  construction  of  the  conception  of  Moral  Freedom 
which  aims  to  afford  a  sufficient  explanation  of  the  most 
patent  facts  must  admit  some  truth  from  them  both.  For  they 
are  both  right  in  much  of  what  they  affirm.  But  they  are  both 
wrong  in  much  of  what  they  neglect  or  deny  ;  and  they  are  both 
wrong  in  the  extreme  to  which  they  push  their  own  way  of  giv- 
ing a  theoretical  construction  to  the  phenomena.  It  should 
never  be  forgotten  that  Determinism  always  has  been,  is  now, 
and  must  continue  to  be,  a  theory  for  explaining  undoubted 
facts.  As  I  have  said,  it  is  a  scholastic  affair.  And  now  we 
discover  that  its  two  main  forms  are  totally  and  irreconcilably 
contradictory  with  regard  to  the  fundamental  question  :  Do 
the  psychoses  stand  in  causal  connections  with  one  another  ? 
Or,  to  state  the  same  question  in  a  more  practical  manner : 
Do  men  mean  anything  which  corresponds  to  the  reality, 
when  they  explain  their  own  and  each  other's  conduct  by 
referring  to  the  influence  of  passion,  desire,  estimate  of  the 
ideal  good  of  truth,  beauty,  or  duty ;  or  to  the  tendencies  of  a 
mental  and  moral  sort  which  are  popularly  summed  up  in  the 
word,  character?  "Yes,"  says  the  Old  Fashioned  Deter- 
minism ;  "  and  by  such  influences  we  are  to  explain  all  choices 
as  strictly  determined,  though  by  antecedent  psychoses." 
"  No,"  says  the  New  Fashioned  Determinism ;  "  for  all  psy- 
choses, and  the  subjects  of  them  all,  are  mere  phenomena ; 
they  can  determine  nothing  ;  they,  and  their  order  of  arising 
and  setting,  are  strictly  determined  by  the  antecedent  or  con- 
comitant chain  of  physical  changes." 


168  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

Let  us  now  ask  for  a  brief  re-examination  of  those  facts  of 
experience  on  which  such  portentous  theories  rely  in  order  to 
rally  around  themselves  their  schools  of  adherents.  That 
men  are  actually  influenced  by  their  emotional  states  of  every 
kind  in  the  matter  of  their  conduct  and  in  the  development  of 
character,  has  already  been  admitted  as  an  indubitable  matter 
of  experience.  That  men  do  find  the  explanation  of  conduct 
—  and  an  explanation  which  deals  with  causce  verce  —  in  their 
passions  and  desires,  in  their  loves  and  hates,  and  in  the  various 
forms  of  impulse  toward  different  kinds  of  good,  is  a  truth  of 
experience  on  which  all  society  and  all  human  life,  as  well  as 
all  science  or  philosophy  of  conduct,  are  based.  And  one 
may  be  pardoned  for  a  sort  of  contemptuous  impatience  with 
any  theory  of  moral  freedom  —  whether  deterministic  or 
libertarian — which  denies  the  reality  of  the  explanation. 
But  it  is  a  long  and  blind  road  to  travel  which  leads  from  this 
admission  to  the  unlimited  conclusions  of  what  has  been 
called  the  Old  Fashioned  Determinism.  Especially  is  this  true 
if  one  honestly  proposes  and  faithfully  endeavors  to  follow 
the  guidance  of  experience,  and  not  to  abandon  the  highway 
of  Empiricism  for  the  steep  and  dangerous  paths  of  an  a  priori 
metaphysics  of  Causation.  For,  let  the  formula  which  is  to 
embody  the  deterministic  conclusion  be  framed  as  skilfully 
as  possible,  and  it  will  be  found  that,  unless  it  is  made  depend- 
ent upon  some  misconception  of  the  metaphysics  of  causation, 
it  cannot  succeed,  even  as  a  formula,  in  covering  all  the 
facts  of  experience.  When  analyzed,  the  statements  of  every 
attempt  at  a  purely  empirical  doctrine  of  the  deterministic 
order  prove  to  be  either  absurd,  or  tautological,  or  insuf- 
ficiently founded. 

What  now  is  the  position  which  must  be  proved  to  accord 
with  the  sum-total  of  human  experience  if  we  are  to  accept 
the  view  of  the  first  form  of  Determinism  ?  It  is  that  all  the 
self-determining  activities  of  the  Self  are,  contrary  to  its  own 
impression,  really  determined  by  its  own  antecedent  states, 


MORAL  FREEDOM  169 

under  the  laws  of  association  and  habit.  Shortened  up  and 
stiffened,  this  statement  may  be  made  to  read :  So-called 
motives  are  the  sufficient  and  efficient  causes  of  all  so-called 
choices.  And,  in  general,  the  whole  series  of  psychoses  which 
constitute  the  life  history  of  a  Moral  Self  are  a  causal  chain 
in  which  each  link  is  dependent  in  the  most  absolute  fashion 
upon  the  preceding  links. 

In  every  deterministic  but  empirical  construction  of  the 
principles  of  human  mental  and  moral  development  there  is 
much  false  as  well  as  much  true  psychology.  The  two  or  three 
most  important  false  conceptions  of  psychical  life  and  of  its 
meaning  which  are  held  by  this  form  of  the  theory  may 
now  be  noticed.  In  the  first  place,  so-called  "  motives  "  are 
treated  by  it  as  states  of  consciousness  that  can  tliemselves 
be  considered  independently  of  that  power,  or  aspect,  of  the 
Self  which  we  call  Will.  But  even  in  the  lower  stages  of 
man's  life  it  is  psychologically  inexact  not  to  regard  him  as  an 
active  Self,  as  a  Will,  which  in  some  measure  determines  its 
own  motives,  and  is  not  wholly  determined  by  them.  Especi- 
ally when  the  power  of  intelligent  and  deliberate  choice  unfolds 
itself,  and  in  some  sort  according  to  the  extent  and  height 
of  its  unfolding,  deeds  of  will  begin  to  determine  motives  as 
truly  as  motives  determine  deeds  of  will.  And  as  the  devel- 
opment of  moral  being  goes  on,  the  phenomena  of  imitation, 
instinct,  impulse,  and  desire,  in  unchecked  and  irrational 
form  —  all  that  goes  to  make  up  the  push  of  mere  motive  in 
its  lower  stages  —  become  relatively  less  distinctive ;  and  the 
phenomena  of  will,  with  its  principle  of  freedom  under  the 
higher  laws  of  mental  development,  become  relatively  more 
prominent  and  distinctive.  It  is  very  largely  this  in  which 
consists  the  manhood  of  man,  the  nature  of  Selfhood  set  with 
other  selves  into  relations  of  domestic,  social,  and  political 
kind.  This  espousal  of  tlie  extreme  and  now  obsolete  "  faculty- 
theory  "  of  the  soul  vitiates  the  old-fashioned  form  of  Deter- 
minism.   Its  conception  of  a  Self  as  a  succession  of  strictly 


170  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

determined  and  causally  connected  psychoses  is  totally  inade- 
quate. For  it  must  be  substituted  the  conception  of  an  evolv- 
ing, conscious,  and  rational  Life  —  depending  for  its  original 
characteristics  on  its  membership  in  the  race,  and  for  its  more 
special  characteristics  on  its  ancestral  inheritance,  influenced 
constantly  by  education  and  environment,  and  developing  under 
the  laws  of  association  and  the  principle  of  habit.  But  to  say 
all  this  is  not  to  give  the  entire  account  of  this  conscious  and 
rational  Life ;  for  at  every  stage  of  its  development,  and  in- 
creasingly if  it  develops  in  accordance  with  its  higher  powers 
and  better  opportunities,  the  Self  is,  by  its  choices,  constantly 
determining  itself,  and  so  manifesting  a  certain  relative 
independence  of  its  inheritance,  its  environment,  and  even  of 
its  own  past  development. 

No  particular  deed  of  will,  when  analyzed  in  detail,  can  be 
resolved,  on  empirical  grounds  at  least,  into  the  mere  effect  of 
the  antecedent  motives.  This  is  true  above  all  of  those 
choices  which  have  the  highest  import  for  the  moral  life. 
There  are  choices  where  strong  passions,  desires,  affections  or 
selfish  aims  and  impulses,  come  into  competition  with  the 
estimate  of  the  value  of  ideals  and  with  the  generally  mild- 
mannered  and  low-keyed  form  of  sentiment  which  accompanies 
and  enforces  all  ideals.  About  the  true  psychological  char- 
acter and  the  ethical  significance  of  such  choices,  the  current 
English  psychology  and  ethics  of  the  seventeenth,  eighteenth, 
and  early  part  of  the  nineteenth  centuries  has  been  product- 
ive of  much  obscurity  and  misconception.  This  psychology 
set  up  a  mechanical,  a  perfectly  "  wooden "  standard,  for 
measuring  the  relative  weights  or  impulsive  tendencies  of 
those  states  of  consciousness  which  it  was  pleased  to  isolate 
from  the  stream  of  consciousness  and  hypostasize  as 
"  motives." 

Indeed,  without  admitting  the  full  force  of  those  facts  of  con- 
sciousness on  which  the  conception  of  moral  freedom  is  itself 
based,  we  have  no  ground  in  experience  for  the  measurement 


MORAL  FREEDOM  171 

of  the  relative  intensities  of  "  motive ''  states.  It  is  true  that 
there  are  certain  conditions  of  mind  in  which  the  prominent  fac- 
tors call  attention  to  the  speed  and  inevitable  nature  of  the  tran- 
sition from  impulse  to  volition.  In  some  of  these  conditions 
nearly  the  whole  of  one's  consciousness  is  summed  up  in  the 
feeling  of  being  hurried  away  to  an  issue  in  action  which  one 
foresees,  and  yet  is  unable  to  avoid.  But  such  conditions  by 
no  means  constitute  the  whole,  or  the  chief  part,  of  any  man's 
moral  life.  And  even  in  them  it  is  often,  if  not  generally 
true,  that  the  consciously  active  Self  can,  and  does,  modify 
the  earlier  stages  of  these  strong  impulses  by,  at  least,  a  par- 
tial acceptance  or  rejection  of  them,  —  while  it  is  more  than 
probable  that  with  the  adult  man  no  conscious  action  which 
has  moral  quality  is  totally  passive.  Moreover,  when  one 
tries  to  estimate  the  impulsive  power  of  different  motives  even 
of  the  more  passionate  and  emotional  kind,  one  discovers  that 
there  is  little  or  no  chance  here  for  any  near  approach  to  a 
science  of  mental  and  moral  dynamics.  Nor  is  this  fact  due 
wholly  or  chiefly  to  ignorance;  it  is  the  rather  due  to  the 
nature  of  the  case.  The  doer  himself,  no  matter  how  shrewd 
in  self-estimate  he  may  have  become,  cannot  weigh  his  own 
motives  accurately,  according  to  their  intensity.  How  much 
less  can  any  one  external  to  the  motives  perform  such  a  feat 
in  spiritual  mathematics.  In  the  bare  fact  of  experience, 
motives  themselves  are  nothing  statical ;  they  do  not  appear 
and  remain  before  the  mind,  side  by  side,  in  the  same  field  of 
consciousness.  And  the  mental  image  of  a  past  (even  of  a 
single  moment  past)  passion  or  emotion  cannot,  for  the 
amount  of  its  merely  impulsive  potency,  be  weighed  against  the 
now  real  motive,  the  present  energetic  urgency  of  passion  or 
emotion.  What  determines  in  such  cases,  if  all  intelligent 
and  deliberate  choice  is  at  any  moment  ruled  out,  is  associa- 
tion and  habit,  — what  is  called  character. 

When,  however,  the  more  intense  impulsive  states  of  con- 
sciousness contend  for  the  control  of  the  purposes  and  deeds 


172  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

with  the  Self  regarded  as  placing  a  sentimental  value  on  in- 
tellectual, aesthetic,  or  moral  ideals,  the  problem  of  spiritual 
dynamics  becomes  —  not  simply  more  complicated  and  insolv- 
able,  but  even  intrinsically  absurd.  Here,  again,  it  is  true 
that  one  meets  with  examples  of  minds  which  choose  what  they 
estimate  to  be  true,  beautiful,  or  morally  good,  with  an  im- 
pulsive intensity  of  feeling  which  amounts  to  an  overwhelming 
passion  or  affection.  So  the  Russian  Queen  longed  to  die, 
that  she  might  learn  what  Leibnitz  could  not  tell  her ;  or,  ac- 
cording to  tradition,  Martin  Luther  appealed  to  God  to  sup- 
port his  chosen  position,  for  he  "  could  not  do  otherwise  "  than 
follow  his  convictions  as  to  the  right.  But  such  devotion  to 
ideals  is  itself  due  to  the  repeated  free  choice  of  the  same 
ideals  in  preference  to  other  contending  interests  of  a  lower 
kind.  In  general,  however,  the  so-called  moving  influence  of 
ideals  of  truth,  beauty,  and  righteousness,  cannot  be  compared 
with  that  of  the  impulsive  states  of  consciousness,  in  respect 
merely  to  the  intensity  with  which  both  act  upon  the  Will. 
Indeed,  unless  chosen  repeatedly  and  made  the  somewhat  con- 
sistent principles  of  conduct  as  defining  the  ends  of  life,  and 
as  regulating  the  means  for  attaining  these  ends,  ideals  in  gene- 
ral have  little  or  no  motive  power  in  them.  They  are  the 
rivals  of  the  motives  to  choose  only  as  we  prefer  them,  for 
their  very  quality's  sake ;  and  in  this  voluntary  preference  we 
move  toward  them  with  self-determination,  rather  than  allow 
ourselves  to  be  moved  away  from  them  by  no  matter  how  in- 
tensely powerful  appetites,  passions,  and  affections. 

It  is  only  by  neglecting  such  plain  facts  of  human  experi- 
ence that  one  can  put  any,  even  temporary,  confidence  in  that 
P«ewc?(?-science  of  mental  and  moral  dynamics  which  the  psy- 
chological and  political  forms  of  Determinism  cultivate.  To 
convey  knowledge  which  enables  its  student  to  make,  either 
as  respects  the  action  of  the  individual,  or  with  regard  to  the 
course  of  the  community,  any  entirely  trustworthy  predictions 
for  the  future,  it  is  confessedly  feeble  and  incomplete.     Its  at- 


MORAL  FREEDOM  *  173 

tempt  to  account  for  the  facts  of  choice  is  often  incapable  of 
expression  except  in  terms  of  a  most  notable  circulus  in  defin- 
iendo.  For  example,  Mr.  A  chooses  the  conduct  X ;  but  Mr. 
B,  under  seemingly  similar  circumstances,  chooses  the  con- 
duct y.  The  choice  was,  in  both  cases,  a  matter  of  fact ;  and 
obviously  it  was  an  intelligent  and  deliberate  choice.  Tf%, 
now,  did  A  choose  X,  when  B  chose  Y^  Why  did  A  choose 
pushpin  or  something  similar,  when  B  chose  poetry  ;  or,  why 
did  the  former  elect  to  gratify  a  base  passion  while  the  latter 
determined,  in  spite  of  strong  temptation  from  similar  passion, 
to  remain  true  to  his  ideal  of  the  noble  and  the  good  ?  Be- 
cause the  one  preferred  the  gratification  of  desire  or  passion  ; 
the  other  preferred  fidelity  to  his  conviction  as  to  what  was 
beautiful  or  righteous.  But  what  is  the  precise  meaning  of 
the  word  "  preference "  in  such  cases  ?  Does  it  mean  that 
gratified  passion  was  in  the  one  case,  and  fidelity  to  truth  and 
duty  in  the  other  case,  esteemed  the  greater  good ;  and  that 
this  mathematical  phrase  —  "  the  greater  "  —  refers  simply  to 
the  impulsive  magnitude  of  the  affective  consciousness,  the  mere 
bulk  in  the  stir  of  feelings  aroused  by  the  mental  image  of  the 
desired  end  ?  The  facts  of  the  moral  consciousness  cannot 
be  handled  with  any  such  significance  to  one's  language  as 
this.  For  over  and  over  again  has  it  been  true  that  A^  who 
chose  to  gratify  passion,  has  looked  upon  duty  as  seeming 
very  fair  and  attractive  to  him  ;  and  B^  who  has  chosen  fidel- 
ity to  duty,  has  often  formed  and  executed  this  deed  of  will  in 
spite  of  passions  as  impulsively  strong  as  those  of  A.  More- 
over, if  preference  means  nothing  more  than  the  intellectual 
estimate  of  an  apparent  good,  the  choice  which  is  the  actual 
preference,  has  not  yet  been  accounted  for.  What  then  re- 
mains that  is  empirically  certain,  but  the  empty  declaration : 
A  chose  X  because  he  did  choose  it  (actually  preferred  it) ; 
and  for  a  like  reason,  which  is  no  reason  at  all,  B  chose  Y? 

It  must  be  confessed,  then,  that  there  is  no  fixed  standard 
possible  for  the  measurement  of  the  various  classes  of  so-called 


174  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

motives ;  that,  where  quantitative  comparisons  are  at  all  pos- 
ible  one  needs  always  to  bear  in  mind  a  certain  qualitative  in- 
comparableness  between  passions  and  affections  as  motives  and 
the  intellectual  estimate  of  the  value  of  ideals  as  motives; 
and  that,  practically,  the  mysterious  problem  afforded  by 
the  Self  in  its  actual  self-determination  remains  essentially 
unchanged.  Nor  is  this  problem  the  better  solved  by  taking 
into  the  account  the  character  of  the  person  making  the 
choice.  A  chooses  X,  largely  because  J.  is  J. ;  and  B  chooses  F, 
because  B  is  B.  Thus  the  inquiry  becomes,  not  so  much  a 
problem  in  the  dynamics  of  human  personality,  but  rather  in  its 
chemistry.  Just  as  a  certain  product  necessarily  emerges 
from  the  union  under  given  circumstances  of  a  definite  quan- 
tity of  definitively  constituted  atoms,  so  —  Determinism 
claims  —  is  essentially  the  case  with  the  human  constitution. 
The  nature  of  the  constituents  is  the  important  statical 
consideration  in  attempting  to  account  for  all  the  combina- 
tions into  which  they  are  found  to  enter.  Thus  even  writers 
on  ethics  who,  like  Mr.  Leslie  Stephen,  are  avowedly  and 
consistently  deterministic  throughout,  find  themselves  com- 
pelled to  hold  that  the  ethical  feelings  and  ideas  expressed 
in  such  words  as  "  blame,"  "  merit,"  "  good,"  and  "  bad,"  etc., 
attach  themselves  properly  only  to  the  character  of  the  indi- 
vidual, and  not  to  his  native  endowment  of  passions  and 
emotions. 

No  philosophy  of  conduct  is  possible  which  does  not  find 
room  for  the  facts  of  experience,  and  the  theoretical  construc- 
tion of  moral  principles,  that  are  implied  in  a  valid  conception 
of  character.  It  is  under  the  laws  which  control  the  for- 
mation of  character  that  man  gains  such  moral  freedom  as 
he  has,  and  uses  this  freedom  in  the  continuance  and  develop- 
ment of  a  truly  moral  life.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  con- 
ception of  character  cannot  itself  be  formed  without  taking 
into  account  those  conscious  experiences  in  which  the  con- 
ception  of    moral  freedom  has  its   origin;    and   any  such 


OF  TH: 


MORAL  FREEDOM 


conception  of  character  as  contravenes  and  annuls  the  con- 
ception of  freedom  is  itself  unfit  to  command  our  intellectual 
allegiance  and  is  injurious  to  the  morals  of  mankind.  In 
arguing  this  question  it  is  especially  necessary  to  heed  the 
warning  against  hypostasizing.  What  men  call  character  is 
no  entity,  no  self-existent  principle,  capable  of  playing  an 
independent  part  in  the  dynamics  of  the  moral  life.  The 
character  of  any  existence  is  merely  the  sum-total  of  those 
more  uniform  ways  of  its  behavior  by  which  we  are  able  for 
purposes  of  knowledge  and  the  communication  of  knowledge, 
to  distinguish  it  from  other  existences.  But  the  character 
of  a  Self  is  always  a  quite  different  affair  from  the  character 
of  a  Thing.  For  the  character  of  a  Self  always  includes  the 
choices,  and  the  results  of  the  choices,  in  exercising  which  it 
has  been  self-determining.  What  ethics  seeks  is  not  some 
hidden,  statical  core  of  reality  which  stands  in  the  relation  of 
universal  and  omnipotent  cause  to  each  of  the  individual 
choices  ;  the  reality  of  the  individual  Moral  Self  is  rather  itself 
in  a  measure  the  constantly  varying  resultant  of  those  choices. 
The  man's  character  is  not  something  external  to  himself, 
which,  as  a  finished  product  of  the  past  or  an  extra-voluntary 
determining  force,  gives  the  entire  reason  why  he  chooses  as 
he  does  choose.  On  a  basis  of  inherited  potentialities,  indeed, 
and  under  a  variety  of  influences  from  the  total,  constantly 
changing  environment,  and  in  a  certain  subjection  to  the  prin- 
ciple of  habit,  the  Self,  nevertheless,  progressively  determines 
its  own  character. 

Habit  is  indeed  strong,  and  its  bonds  are  often  difficult, 
sometimes  impossible,  to  be  broken.  But,  looked  at  from  the 
historical  point  of  view,  habit  itself  is  very  largely  a  record  of 
self-determining  choices,  a  child  of  moral  freedom.  Looked 
at  from  the  present  psychological  point  of  view  it  is  the  Self, 
tending  more  or  less  strongly  to  choose  certain  forms  of 
conduct ;  and  yet  just  now,  perhaps,  on  the  eve,  by  a  choice, 
of  interrupting  the  previous  current  of  impulses  and  starting 


176  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

the  formation  of  a  new  habit.  Only  the  complete  extinction 
of  moral  freedom  converts  any  man's  character  into  a  purely 
impulsive  cause,  an  all-sufficient  determining  reason,  for  each 
of  the  particulars  of  his  action.  Habit  rules  inexorably  and 
unvaryingly,  only  when  self-determination  has  wholly  ceased. 

It  is  important  now  to  notice  how  the  attempt  to  carry  this 
form  of  the  deterministic  conception,  with  complete  thorough- 
ness of  analysis  and  unbending  rigidity  of  logic,  to  its  last 
conclusion  lands  the  mind  in  the  most  uncompromising  Ma- 
terialism. This  surprising  result  is  reached  in  the  following 
way.  All  psychoses,  it  is  claimed,  are  strictly  determined  by 
pre-existent  psychoses,  and  these  pre-existent  psychoses  by 
others  still  earlier :  —  and  so  on  to  the  very  beginnings  of 
psychical  life.  But  what  determines  for  the  individual  these 
beginnings  and  the  channels  in  which  they  have  flowed  from 
the  first  until  now  ?  Any  complete  answer  must  appeal  to 
the  physical  environment  on  which  the  psychoses  are  reac- 
tions ;  and  back  of  all,  to  the  atomic  structure  and  physico- 
chemical  tendencies  which  were  carried  over  in  the  impreg- 
nated ovum^  —  the  one  certain  and  fixed  antecedent  of  the 
entire  psychical  development.  Thus  the  deterministic  mental 
and  moral  dynamics  ends  in  a  psycho-physical  and  chemico- 
biological  dynamics.  For  it  is  the  physical  and  chemico- 
biological  forces  which  tie  the  conscious  Self  in  with  the 
course  of  Nature,  and  strictly  determine  for  it  disposition, 
character,  and  all  the  conscious  states  and  all  the  pieces  of 
conduct,  —  even  those  which  find  their  account  in  disposition 
and  character,  for  lack  of  a  complete  account  in  the  shifting 
external  environment. 

Such,  then,  is  the  legitimate  outcome  of  this  form  of  the 
deterministic  hypothesis.  All  psychoses,  the  whole  ongoing  of 
the  life  of  the  Self,  with  its  illusory  belief  that  It^  by  its  own 
choices,  can  determine  ought,  as  well  as  its  beneficial  but  equally 
illusory  conviction  that  it  is  somehow  rationally  subject  to 
praise  and  blame,  and  deserving  of  reward  or  punishment,  are 


MORAL  FREEDOM  177 

only  the  phenomenal  exhibition  of  the  really  effective  forces 
of  external  Nature.  At  the  last  we  neither  determine  our- 
selves, nor  are  determined  by  our  own  dispositions  or  char- 
acters :  — 

"  We  are  a  moving  row  of  shadow-shapes,"  — 
Our  very  shapes  are  shadows  and  the  movement  even  is  not 
our  own,  but  Nature's,  whose  products  through  and  through 
we  are. 

To  this  same  conclusion  the  second  form  of  Determinism 
leads  by  a  more  direct  route.  Into  the  arguments  against  its 
rude  hustling  of  moral  freedom  quite  off  the  whole  field  from 
the  start,  I  shall  not  here  enter  in  detail ;  and  this,  for  two 
sufficient  reasons.  In  the  first  place,  I  have  elsewhere  ^  given 
them  a  detailed  treatment,  both  inductive  and  speculative.  In 
the  second  place,  the  slender  basis  upon  which  the  theory  stands 
renders  it  even  more  astounding  than  is  the  first  impression 
made  by  its  far-reaching  consequences.  The  following  sum- 
mary of  conclusions  will,  therefore,  suffice  in  this  connection 
to  answer  the  assumption  that  all  psychoses,  including  choices 
however  deliberate,  are  strictly  determined  by  the  antecedent 
or  concomitant  brain-states :  First,  we  are  almost  completely 
ignorant  of  the  nature  and  relations  of  those  chemico-physi- 
cal  changes  in  the  brain,  into  the  science  of  which  it  is  pro- 
posed to  resolve  the  connections  of  the  mental  states  as  they 
appear  in  consciousness.  About  the  influences  under  which 
we  choose,  and  about  the  conscious  character  of  our  choices, 
we  do  know  much  which  has  the  appearance  at  least  of  the 
most  certain  kind  of  knowledge.  In  this  sphere  all  adult 
human  beings  have  seemingly  trustworthy  information  ;  and 
upon  its  trustworthiness  they  plan  and  conduct  and  estimate 
their  own  lives  and  the  lives  of  others.  But  no  expert  in 
cerebral  physiology,  knows  anything  worth  calling  by  the 
name  of  "science"  about  the  real  nature   of  that  chain  of 

1  Comp.  Elements  of  Physiological  Psychology,  pp.  585-688 ;  Philosophy  of 
Mind,  pp.  113-148  and  208-396. 

12 


178  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

occurrences  in  the  brain-states  which  is  assumed  to  deter- 
mine, without  the  intervention  of  a  soul,  the  sequences  of  the 
conscious  states. 

And  second  :  If  we  had  all  possible,  even  all  conceivable 
knowledge  of  the  laws  of  the  nature  and  established  connec- 
tions of  the  brain-states,  this  knowledge  could  never  explain 
the  activities  of  the  conscious  Self,  especially  its  self-deter- 
mining choices.  For,  not  simply  is  it  true  that  physico- 
chemical  changes  in  the  brain  can  never  be  conceived  of  as 
the  sufficient  explanation  for  changes  in  consciousness ;  it 
is  also  even  more  obviously  true  that  certain  factors  and 
aspects  of  the  more  elaborate  and  developed  mental  and 
moral  processes  have  no  conceivable  physical  correlate  —  not 
to  say,  physical  explanation.  What  can  be  meant,  for  ex- 
ample, by  ascribing  the  feeling  of  obligation,  or  the  estimate 
of  the  ideal  value  of  a  beautiful  picture  or  of  a  noble  action, 
or  the  feelings  of  potency  and  imputability  which  belong  to 
moral  freedom,  to  some  particular  kinds  of  chemico-physical 
changes  in  the  brain-states  as  their  sole  and  sufficient 
explanation  ? 

And,  third:  Abundant  facts  of  experience  furnish  incon- 
testable proof  that,  if  we  are  to  interpret  the  phenomena 
of  the  influence  of  the  body  over  the  mind  as  significant  of  a 
series  of  real  transactions  we  are  equally  compelled  to  interpret 
the  phenomena  of  the  influence  of  the  mind  over  the  body  as 
having  the  same  real  significance.  Feelings,  ideas,  and  especi- 
ally choices,  considered  as  conscious  processes,  have  quite  as 
much  claim  to  afford  a  satisfactory  explanation  of  changes  in 
the  brain-states,  as  the  latter  have  to  be  made  realiter  account- 
able for  the  character  and  sequences  of  the  feelings,  ideas,  and 
choices.  If  the  theory  which  directs  all  the  energy  in  one  di- 
rection, after  ascribing  it  all  to  a  psychical  source,  comes  into 
conflict  with  the  physical  hypothesis  of  the  conservation  and 
correlation  of  energy;  so  does  the  theory  which  finds  only  a 
physical  source  of  energy,  while  scouting  at  the  notion  that  con- 


MORAL   FREEDOM  179 

scious  states  can  be  "  causes  "  of  nervous  changes  in  any  verifia- 
ble meaning  of  the  words.  The  current  resort  to  the  absolutely 
unintelligible  theory  of  psycho-physical  parallelism  helps  out 
the  one  theory  no  more  than  the  other.  We  know  as  much 
which  may  warrant  the  claim  that  the  conscious  Self  is  a 
source  of  control  for  the  body  as  we  know  in  favor  of  the 
proposition  that  the  body  accounts  for  changes  in  the  con- 
scious Self. 

Furthermore,  fourth :  All  human  science  of  every  sort, 
considered  purely  as  psychological  fact,  is  only  man's  way  of 
explaining  the  connections  of  his  own  conscious  states.  Let 
cerebral  physiology  succeed  in  the  most  brilliant  discoveries, 
the  saying  of  the  old  woman  in  one  of  Fritz  Renter's  novels 
will  still  remain  true  :  "  There  is  nothing  so  near  to  one  as 
one's  self."  What  is  known  immediately  and  indubitably  is 
only  this  —  the  psychoses  as  influencing  each  other,  and  the 
relations  in  which  they  all  seem  to  stand  to  what  we  call  the 
Subject  of  them  all,  the  conscious  Ego.  What  men  actually 
experience  is  the  dependence  of  choices  on  perceptions, 
feelings,  and  ideas,  and  the  dependence  of  feelings,  ideas,  and 
perceptions  on  choices.  Only  by  remote,  intricate,  and  often 
doubtful  inferences  do  they  reach  any  conclusions  at  all  as 
to  the  connections  between  so-called  brain-states,  or  between 
them  and  the  sequences  of  human  consciousness.  Such 
inferences  can  never  establish  for  themselves  the  scientific 
right  to  contradict  and  annul  those  more  immediate  facts  of 
experience  in  order  to  explain  which  they  themselves  have 
been  introduced  as  hypotheses. 

Finally,  fifth :  When  this  second  form  of  Determinism  is 
carried  to  its  extreme  logical  result,  it,  too,  presents  us  with 
a  picture  of  all  Reality,  including  human  life  and  human 
society,  which  undermines  the  entire  structure  of  morality. 
The  individual  man  becomes,  absolutely  and  with  no  possibility 
of  any  qualification,  a  phenomenon  of  the  blind  and  soulless 
play  of  physical  forces.     Human  society  and  all  the  develop- 


180  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

ment  of  man  in  history  must  be  explicable  in  the  same  way. 
Human  history  is  the  puppet  show  of  physical  Nature ;  it  is 
in  no  sense,  at  any  time,  the  structure  of  man's  building. 
The  phrases  which  ethics  so  glibly  employs  when  it  dis- 
courses of  "  moral  forces,"  "  moral  ideals,"  "  moral  standards," 
have  no  real  applicability  to  the  facts,  when  man  has  been 
reduced  to  the  strictly  determined  series  of  conscious  puffs, 
phenomenal  of  the  partially  known  changes  that,  for  unknown 
reasons,  go  on  in  that  universal  boiler  and  steam-chest  we 
call  the  World  of  Reality.  Surely  man's  condition  is  worse 
than  that  of  the  abandoned  product  of  an  illegitimate  and 
unethical  mixture : 

"  In  die  Welt  hinausgestossen 
Steht  der  Mensch  verlassen  da." 

The  truth,  I  think,  is  simply  this  :  all  Determinism,  strictly 
constructed  and  logically  carried  to  its  issue,  ends  in  Material- 
ism. Why  should  its  advocate  be  afraid  or  ashamed  of 
the  issue  he  has  himself  forced  ?  Surely,  the  last  thing 
to  go  in  any  system  or  practice  of  morals  should  be  that 
honest  manliness  which  stands  upright  in  the  positions  which 
have  voluntarily  and  deliberately  been  assumed.  And  to 
fear  being  called  a  name  which  one  merits  is  as  cowardly  as  to 
call  another  an  opprobrious  name  which  is  not  appropriate  or 
deserved.  But  the  return  to  a  study  of  the  facts  of  conscious 
experience  enables  the  student  of  moral  consciousness 
promptly  to  throw  off  this  nightmare  of  a  materialistic 
Determinism. 

I  will  now  notice  briefly  the  attempt  to  establish  Deter- 
minism inductively  upon  a  basis  of  statistics.  Here  the 
argument  is  that  the  individual  cannot  have  moral  freedom, 
because  there  are  facts  to  show  that  the  multitudes  of  individ- 
uals frequently  act  alike  under  like  influences.  To  every  such 
argument  may  be  opposed  the  undoubted  facts  that  the  validity 
of  the  statistics  themselves  is  usually  exceedingly  question- 


MORAL  FREEDOM  181 

able;  that  the  interpretation  of  the  statistics  is  generally 
doubtful ;  and  that  other  classes  of  statistics  very  severely  test, 
if  they  do  not  wholly  controvert,  this  form  of  the  determin- 
istic hypothesis.  For  example,  if  the  number  of  illegitimate 
births  in  some  district  of  Southern  Europe  suddenly  suffers 
a  great  diminution,  in  close  connection  with  the  revival  of  well- 
paid  employment  for  the  female  operatives  in  its  silk-mills, 
this  does  not  prove  that  Maria  or  Angelica  has  been  com- 
pelled or  determined  to  become  virtuous  thereby,  or  even  that 
she  and  her  companions  have  really  become  more  virtuous. 
Probably,  it  simply  shows  that  a  larger  number  of  couples  are 
now  financially  able  to  comply  with  the  legal  restrictions 
which  the  State  has  unfortunately  imposed  upon  marriage.  But 
the  virtue  or  the  vice  of  sexual  intercourse  is  not  wholly,  or 
even  chiefly,  determined  by  statute.  Maria  and  Angelica,  in 
that  eternal  conflict  in  which  we  are  all  placed  between  our 
moral  ideals  and  our  lower  impulses  and  inferior  interests, 
may  choose  according  to  their  best  light  to  be  either  good  or 
bad,  quite  irrespective  of  the  conditions  of  the  silk  market. 
Doubtless  for  them,  as  for  us  all,  the  external  conditions  and 
internal  excitements,  but  above  all  the  habitual  past  clioices 
will  make  goodness,  or  badness,  much  easier  or  much  harder 
in  any  particular  case.  But  for  either  of  these  two  souls,  as 
for  millions  of  others,  there  may  come  a  moment  in  prayer, 
or  reflection,  or  memory,  when  the  worth  of  the  moral  ideal 
will  be  so  revealed  as  to  let  it  assert  its  more  legitimate 
influence.  Then  the  conscious  self-determining  Self  will 
have  its  best  chance  to  assert  and  to  establish  its  right  to  a 
higher  and  more  effective  form  of  moral  freedom.  For  sudden 
reforms  and  complete  religious  conversions  are,  after  all,  not 
such  rare  and  isolated  phenomena  in  human  society.  And 
they  constitute  hard  facts  for  any  theory  of  Determinism  that 
wishes  to  plant  itself  upon  purely  empirical  grounds. 

Let  it  be  admitted,  however,  that  good  deeds-  and  bad  deeds, 
virtues  and  crimes,  tend  to  go  in  groups.     This  is  only  to 


182  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

reinforce  a  truth  necessary  to  be  taken  account  of  by  every 
attempt  at  a  philosophy  of  conduct.  Certainly  men  are 
influenced  in  their  behavior  as  individuals  by  the  social  con- 
ditions under  which  they  exist  and  develop.  The  obviously 
criminal  population  is  always  largely  made  up  of  a  class  that 
on  account  of  discouraging  environment,  relatively  great  sus- 
ceptibility to  impulsive  considerations,  and  a  low  degree  of 
intelligence,  has,  on  the  average,  a  less  degree  of  freedom. 
Moral  freedom  is  always,  indeed,  a  matter  of  degrees.  The 
theory  of  morals,  as  well  as  the  practice  of  enlightened  men, 
takes  all  this  into  account.^  We  expect  that  the  final  judg- 
ment and  the  ideally  perfect  judge  will  not  fail  to  authenti- 
cate this  truth.  But  especially  in  the  most  enlightened  and 
civilized  nations  there  are  not  a  few  who  have  fallen  down 
from  the  higher  into  the  lower  stratum ;  and  some  come  up 
from  the  lower,  in  spite  of  all  their  burdens  and  temptations, 
into  strata  that  lie  far  above.  But  falls,  and  reforms,  and 
risings,  in  the  ethical  scale  are  significant  of  the  same  por- 
tentous fact ;  the  character  and  destiny  of  the  individual  are 
not  all  strictly  determined  irrespective  of  the  self-determina- 
tion of  the  conscious,  rational,  and  ethically-constituted  Self. 

We  have,  then,  a  most  lamentably  weak  non-sequitur  in  the 
argument  which,  from  a  certain  observed  regularity  in  the 
external  actions  of  a  multitude  of  individuals,  concludes  that 
all  the  conduct  of  every  individual  in  that  multitude  is  strictly 
dependent  upon  influences  which  are,  as  it  were,  external  to 
his  own  choice.  That  man  is  in  some  sort  the  creature  of 
circumstances,  and  that  many  men  are  largely  so  —  who 
would  venture  to  deny  this  in  full  view  of  his  experience  with 
■men  ?  But  that  man  is  by  deeds  of  will  also  in  some  sort  the 
creator  of  his  own  character,  and  the  moulder  of  society  and 
of  nature ;  and  that  many  men  are  so  in  a  somewhat  large 

1  Compare  the  pictures  of  some  of  these  lower  classes  of  society  —  much 
more  sensible  and  true  to  the  facts  than  the  work  of  Lombroso  and  his  followers 
—  given  by  Josiah  Flynt  in  his  "  Tramping  with  Tramps,"  and  "  The  World  of 
Graft." 


MORAL   FREEDOM  183 

and  impressive  way  —  who  would  venture  to  refuse  to  admit 
this  complementary  truth  ? 

During  the  entire  previous  discussion  it  can  scarcely  have 
escaped  observation  that  the  effort  of  a  strict  Determinism 
to  keep  close  to  the  facts  of  experience  is  never  quite  success- 
ful. The  Determinist  cannot  be  content  to  argue  that  his  case 
is  true,  —  in  fact  he  always  covertly  assumes  it  is  true  in  fact, 
because  he  thinks  it  must  he  true.  But  this  must  he  is  itself 
the  result  of  a  misconception.  It  is  due  to  a  partial  or  com- 
plete failure  to  understand  the  conception  of  Causation.  The 
philosophy  of  conduct,  therefore,  must  undertake  the  criticism 
of  this  conception.  Of  this  task  also  I  shall  now  only  briefly 
summarize  what  I  have  already  said  with  great  detail  in 
several  other  connections.^ 

First  of  all,  it  is  essential  to  bear  in  mind  how  exceedingly 
complicated  and  shifty  is  the  nature  of  the  conception  of 
Causation,  with  its  different  forms  of  statement  and  of  appli- 
cation. The  very  conception  has  quite  generally  of  late  been 
either  hypostasized  and  made  a  god,  or  banished  as  a  ghost 
from  the  realm  of  scientifically  authorized  abstractions.  But 
it  has  neither  the  unity  of  internal  structure  necessary  for 
such  metaphysical  mythology,  nor  can  it  be  got  rid  of  by  ignor- 
ing or  ridiculing  it.  In  any  workable  form  Causation  obvi- 
ously involves  the  categories  of  Force,  Relation  in  Time  and 
Space,  Law  and  Final  Purpose ;  also  a  certain  mysterious 
residuum  which  all  our  efforts  cannot  resolve,  and  which  we 
are  compelled  to  recognize  in  a  general  way  as  belonging  to 
the  inexplicable  original  Nature  of  things  and  of  souls. 

Now  the  narrow  range  of  vision  and  the  shallow  insight  of 
the  current  scientific  Determinism  consists  in  its  attempt  to 
handle  and  explain  all  experience  as  though  it  came  com- 
pletely under  one  type  of  the  complex  conception  of  causation, 
—  namely,  that  of  a  Physical  Mechanism.     As  we  have  just 

1  Comp.  Philosophy  of  Mind,  chap,  iii,  vi,  ix,  x ;  Philosophy  of  Knowledge, 
chap.  X,  xviii ;  A  Theory  of  Reality,  chap,  iii,  vi,  vii,  x,  xiii. 


184  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

seen,  the  ultimate  logical  consequence  of  the  deterministic 
hypothesis  in  morals  is  this  :  The  World,  of  selves,  as  well  as 
of  things,  is  a  piece  of  mechanism  in  which  ideas  of  value,  as 
well  as  all  the  finer  sentiments  of  art,  morals,  and  religion, 
and  the  choices  which  have  regard  to  such  ideas  and  senti- 
ments play  no  really  effective  part. 

The  psychological  origin  of  the  conception  of  causation 
warns  us  against  any  strictly  mechanical  way  of  interpreting 
our  experience.  This  conception  itself  cannot  be  accounted 
for,  or  its  real  meaning  understood  and  explained,  without 
admitting  the  reality  of  that  conscious  and  rational  self- 
activity  which  culminates  in  ethical,  free  choice.^  The 
processes  in  which  the  formation  of  this  conception  takes 
place  follow  somewhat  the  following  order:  I  know  myself  to 
be  active  ;  I  know  myself  to  be  restricted,  inhibited  in  my 
activity.  In  other  words,  my  deed  of  will  is  generally,  if  not 
universally  accompanied  or  followed  by  a  feeling  of  effort. 
Hence  arise  the  ideas  of  those  mutually  related  and  dependent 
forces  with  which  we  invest  external  things.  But  this  experi- 
ence of  energy  inhibited  is,  of  course,  connected  with  the 
more  or  less  careful  and  intelligent  observation  of  the  sequent 
changes  in  the  relations  of  myself  to  things,  and  of  things  to 
one  another.  For  I  am  interested  in  knowing  how  to  carry  out 
my  will  in  effecting  changes  in  things ;  and  through  the  more 
immediately  dependent  changes  which  I  effect,  I  find  that 
more  remote  changes  in  other  things  can  be  brought  about. 
Moreover,  I  soon  develop  an  intellectual  curiosity,  which 
may  become  a  burning  passion  and  a  practical  self-devotion 
in  the  effort  to  discover  how  all  the  different  realities  stand 
related  to  each  other  in  respect  of  their  interdependent 
changes.  How  one  may  secure  the  ends  one  desires  by  using 
one's  force  in  its  dependent  relations   to   other   soulless   or 

1  The  reader  will  please  bear  in  mind  that  the  dogmatic  form  in  which  this 
statement  is  here  given  would  not  seem  justifiable  to  the  author  without  the 
references  already  made  to  the  diacussions  which  have  established  it  as  their 
conclusion. 


MORAL  FREEDOM  185 

soulful  forces  is  of  the  utmost  practical  moment.  But  one's 
more  purely  scientific  interest  is  not  limited  in  this  way. 

So,  then,  from  these  beginnings  within  the  Self  and  its 
most  immediate  environment,  and  with  its  own  most  pressing 
needs  in  view,  the  conception  of  causation  is  objectified,  and 
goes  abroad  to  conquer  the  whole  of  Reality.  For  the  most 
part,  men  understand  the  simpler  sufficient  reasons  of  their 
own  actions,  —  the  ideas  to  which  they  react  willingly,  and 
the  passive  conditions  by  means  of  which  other  men  and  the 
world  of  things  limit  their  wills.  Some  of  every  man's 
environment  —  the  other  selves  —  is  like  his  own  self,  influ- 
enced by  intelligible  motives,  yet  rather  uncertain  and  freaky  ; 
but  the  things  that  are  not  selves,  and  that  appear  to  him 
to  have  no  conscious  ideas,  feelings,  and  choices,  are  relatively 
stable,  uniform,  and  dependable  in  their  modes  of  behavior. 

And  now,  abstracting  from  all  the  social  and  ethical  sides 
of  human  experience,  it  is  possible  to  regard  merely  the  way 
that  things  behave,  when  either  beyond  all  recognizable  in- 
fluence from  the  behavior  of  men,  or  when  left  to  themselves 
to  follow  their  own  natural  ways  of  behavior.  In  this  man- 
ner is  formed  the  scientific  picture  of  a  Mechanism,  in  which 
every  part  is  definitively  limited,  and  strictly  determined,  not 
only  as  to  the  general  course  of  its  behavior,  but  also  as 
to  every  minutest  form  of  its  movement,  every  slightest 
change  in  its  own  constitution,  or  in  its  relations  to  the  great 
Whole.  With  what  confidence  and  joy,  then,  does  the  mind 
that  is  determined  to  be  thoroughgoing  in  its  scientific  con- 
clusions return,  with  this  conception  of  a  purely  mechanical 
causation,  to  force  it  upon  those  very  experiences  of  rational 
and  purposeful  choice,  in  which  the  beginnings  of  the  con- 
ception are  themselves  to  be  found.  Having  interpreted  phys- 
ical phenomena  after  the  analogy  of  personal  experience, 
with  the  most  truly  personal  of  the  characteristics  left  out, 
science  assumes  completely  and  correctly  to  reinterpret 
personal   experience  after  the  analogy  of  a  purely  physical 


186  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

mechanism.  Surely  here  is  a  fine  case  of  matricide !  The 
child,  having  learned  bad  manners  in  foreign  lands,  has  come 
home  to  lay  violent  hands  on  his  own  mother. 

But  the  truth  remains  forever  unshaken  that  all  inter- 
pretation of  experience  is  an  affair  of  the  human  spirit,  and 
that  physical  science  itself  is  the  construct  of  a  rational  and 
free  will.  The  World  of  things  is  itself  a  quasi-personsil 
affair.  As  such  it  gives  to  the  observer  no  reasonable  ground 
for  denying  to  those  beings  whose  experience  is  of  a  fuller 
and  completer  personal  life,  the  more  essential  characteristics 
of  personality  which  they  know  themselves  to  have.  And 
among  these  moral  freedom  is  not  the  least  important,  or  the 
least  clearly  and  forcefully  evinced. 

Repeated  reference  has  been  made,  however,  to  a  certain 
residuum  of  mystery,  a  trace  or  a  large  measure  of  the  un- 
known, and  the  unknowable,  to  which  every  application  of 
the  principle  of  sufficient  reason  makes  a  tacit  confession. 
Here  is  a  consideration,  to  take  account  of  which  is  very 
important  for  the  philosophy  of  conduct.  Let  us  begin  with 
the  case  as  the  physical  sciences  deal  with  this  principle. 
Suppose,  for  example,  that  I  am  searching  for  the  cause  of 
some  chemical  combination,  and  I  am  told  that  it  is  to  be 
explained  in  the  following  way :  the  elements.  A,  B,  C,  D, 
under  definite  conditions,  and,  in  definite  proportions,  N,  M, 
have  united  according  to  the  formula  X  Y.  But  now  I  will 
inquire  :  Why  have  these  particular  elements,  J.,  etc.,  chosen 
to  act  and  react  in  this  particular  manner,  while  —  as  we 
know  —  under  similar  conditions,  other  elements,  such  as  E, 
-F,  (7,  and  ZT,  would  behave  in  a  markedly  different  way  ? 
The  only  answer  to  the  question  Why  ?  in  such  a  case  must  be 
found  in  the  mysterious  nature  of  A^  etc.,  and  of  E^  etc.  But 
this  is  to  say,  that  in  all  our  explanations  by  means  of  the  prin- 
ciple of  sufficient  reason,  we  leave  certain  factors  unexplained. 
Nor  is  this  true  simply  of  those  particular  limitations  of  know- 
ledge which   further  investigation  may  remove.     It  is   true 


MORAL  FREEDOM  187 

by  virtue  of  the  very  nature  of  all  human  knowledge  as 
dependent  upon  the  principle  of  sufficient  reason,  with  its 
assumption  of  real  causes,  and  real  effects. 

Suppose,  next,  that  1  am  asking  of  biological  science  to 
explain,  as  fully  as  it  can,  some  one  of  the  simplest  forms 
of  life,  —  an  amoeba,  for  example.  At  present,  we  can  only 
tell  how,  according  to  its  own  nature^  this  particular  living 
form  originates,  develops,  behaves,  propagates  its  own  kind, 
and  ceases  to  exist.  Suppose,  however,  that  at  some  time 
the  chemistry  of  life  shall  be  so  far  advanced  as  to  be  able 
to  ascribe  all  the  changes  in  the  amoeba,  and  its  own  con- 
stitution, and  even  all  the  constitution  and  the  development 
of  every  living  germ,  to  the  potencies  of  the  atoms,  still  the 
truth  for  which  I  am  contending  will  remain  essentially 
unchanged.  Indeed,  this  truth  will  be  made  the  more  aston- 
ishingly obvious.  The  increased  knowledge  of  what  the 
atoms  can  do,  will  only  render  the  final  explanation  of  their 
original  nature  —  the  potentiality  in  which  all  actuality  resides 
—  tlie  more  profoundly  mysterious,  the  more  hopelessly  un- 
knowable. 

There  is  little  reason,  then,  for  surprise  that  the  nature  of 
man  — itself,  in  its  depths,  unknowable  —  must  always  be 
made  to  account  for  so  much  in  explanation  of  the  important 
part  he  plays  in  the  drama  of  his  own  historical  development. 
We  find  abundant  reason  for  believing  that  he  is  not  always 
determined,  either  from  without,  or  as  a  piece  of  psychical 
mechanism,  after  the  analogy  of  a  physical  machine.  We 
find  abundant  reason  for  affirming  that  he  is  also  self-de- 
termining —  by  nature  potentially  so,  and  in  fact  often  be- 
coming actually  so.  And  if  the  answer  to  such  inquiries  as. 
How  can  he  have  this  mixed  constitution  which  thus  differ- 
ences him  from  all  physical  existences,  and  from  the  lower 
animals  ?  or.  Whence  comes  this  gift  of  moral  freedom  ?  must 
remain  unanswered,  still  the  student  of  the  philosophy  of 
conduct  need  not  be  ashamed  ;  and  he   cannot   be   accused 


188  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

of  any  peculiar  isolation  in  his  ignorance.  In  the  name  of 
philosophy,  he  may  even  make  bold  to  answer:  Such  is 
apparently  the  decision  of  that  Absolute  Will  and  Reason  in 
whose  Being  man,  as  well  as  all  other  existences,  has  his 
life  and  being.^  In  the  name  of  religion  he  may  say  :  God 
knows  how  it  can  be,  and  God's  will  is  the  ultimate  sufficient 
reason  that  it  should  be  so. 

Finally,  as  the  student  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct  makes 
over  to  Metaphysics  and  to  the  Philosophy  of  Religion  the 
right  and  the  duty  to  say  whatever  may  remain  to  be  said 
on  the  limits  of  human  knowledge,  and  the  possibility  of  a 
speculative  solution  of  this  mystery  of  moral  freedom,  he 
need  feel  no  alarm  at  the  cry  that  his  view  of  human  nature 
is  injurious  to  the  integrity  of  the  physical  or  psycho-physical 
mechanism.  The  stars  in  their  courses  have  greatly  in- 
fluenced the  development  of  man.  The  greater  chains  of 
physical  causation  are  too  rigid  for  finite  beings  to  bend  aside 
to  any  appreciable  extent.  But  that  man's  will  does  largely 
change  the  face  of  external  nature  is  simply  a  fact  of  daily 
experience.  The  physical  mechanism  in  the  midst  of  which 
he  develops  is  more  durable  than  steel  where  its  own  essen- 
tial integrity  needs  to  be  defended ;  but  it  is  as  responsive 
in  many  particulars  to  human  feelings,  ideas,  and  choices,  as 
is  the  most  delicately  constructed  violin  in  the  hands  of  its 
master.  And  to  bring  forward  as  an  argument  for  Deter- 
minism the  possible  overthrow  or  the  essential  marring  of 
the  World-system,  if  moral  freedom  as  involving  self- 
determination  in  any  virtual  way  be  admitted,  is  to  propose  a 
speculative  bugbear  which  any  one,  plain  man  or  philosopher, 
may  regard  with  a  smile  or  pass  by  wholly  unnoticed. 

1  The  way  in  which  the  criticism  of  the  conceptions  of  Causation  and  of 
Freedom  leads  us  back  to  the  idea  of  that  Absolute  whom  religion  esteems  a 
Personal  God  has  been  finely  shown  by  the  Russian  philosopher,  Professor  N. 
la.  Grot,  in  a  treatise  called  "  On  Freedom  of  Will,"  a  written  translation  of 
which  is  in  my  possession. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  MORAL  SELF 

We  are  now  prepared  to  see  how  extended  and  profound  a 
significance  psychological  ethics  imparts  to  the  words  which 
have  been  chosen  for  the  heading  of  this  chapter.  They  are 
synonymous  with  the  entire  nature  of  man  when  we  regard 
him  as  equipped  for  conduct  and  for  the  development  of 
character.  In  a  word,  the  so-called  "Moral  Agent,"  is  the 
Self,  so  constituted  and  actually  in  action  as  to  form  by  volun- 
tary relations  with  other  selves  something  quite  different  from 
a  collection  of  interacting  physical  forces,  or  a  herd  of  animals, 
or  a  mere  multitude  of  human  beings.  As  moral,  the  Self  is  a 
member  of  society ;  and  society  is  the  product  of  the  corre- 
lated conduct  of  a  multitude  of  moral  selves.  With  a  some- 
what different  but  no  less  profound  and  important  meaning 
than  that  which  Aristotle  gave  to  the  saying,  we  may  declare 
that  Ethics  thus  becomes  "  a  sort  of  political  inquiry." 

From  the  full  and  correct  picture  of  man's  ethical  endow- 
ment certain  truths  of  a  general  import  follow  which  need  at 
least  a  brief  mention  before  proceeding  to  the  next  main 
branch  of  our  inquiry.  One  of  these  truths  concerns  the  too 
narrow  use  of  the  word  "  conscience," —  a  use  which  has  given 
rise  to  much  not  wholly  fruitful  (though  by  no  means  entirely 
unprofitable)  discussion,  and  to  no  little  practical  embarrass- 
ment in  the  attempt  to  solve  correctly  the  daily  problems  of 
right  conduct.  By  all  means  "  follow  your  conscience  and 
keep  it  pure  and  good,"  has  been  the  instruction  and  exhorta- 
tion of  moralists  in  all  ages  and  places  of  human  development. 


190  PHILOSOPHY   OF  CONDUCT 

What,  however,  does  it  mean  *' to  follow  one's  conscience ;  " — 
what  precisely,  that  has  a  definitive  application  to  the  conduct 
of  life,  as  well  as  to  the  attempt  theoretically  to  assign  correct 
values  to  the  different  forms  of  conduct  ?  Shall  the  appeal 
be  made  to  unreasoned  and  unreasoning  feeling,  no  matter 
how  much  crowned  with  sanctity  on  account  of  its  associa- 
tions with  early  memories,  religious  ideas,  or  its  seemingly 
original  and  unquestioned  spontaneity  ?  In  its  cruder  but  not 
least  intense  and  effective  forms  this  may  amount  to  a  "  feel- 
ing in  the  bones,"  or  other  bodily  members,  the  heart,  the 
veins,  etc.,  as  the  language  of  men  so  significantly  suggests. 
Or  is  it,  on  the  other  hand,  consonant  with  the  moral  constitu- 
tion, and  wholly  safe,  to  instruct  men  to  disregard  those  sen- 
timents of  obligation  and  approbation  which  are,  in  respect 
of  their  attachment  to  certain  definite  forms  of  conduct, 
undoubtedly  the  results  of  education  and  social  environment, 
and  to  leave  each  to  "  reason  out  for  himself,"  on  the  basis  of 
calculated  consequences  or  in  accordance  with  some  abstract 
ethical  theory  (hedonism,  e.  g.),  the  forms  of  behavior  which 
lie  will  adopt  for  his  own  ?  Not  infrequently,  in  practice, 
such  instruction  results  in  the  formation  of  the  disagreeable 
and  self-conceited  "  crank,"  if  not  of  the  disorderly  and  danger- 
ous criminal.  Will  the  kindly  and  humane  impulses,  as  well 
as  all  the  tendencies  to  a  prompt  resistance  of  evil  and  the 
indignant  infliction  of  penalty  for  unrighteousness,  be  im- 
proved by  submitting  themselves  to  the  control  of  intelligent 
and  deliberate  choice.  Or  shall  indiscriminate  kindness  and 
so-called  charity,  because  they  evoke  the  feeling  of  obligation 
and  obtain  the  reward  of  approbation,  while  still  commending 
themselves  to  the  ethical  judgment  of  the  majority  of  mankind, 
be  excused  from  deferring  to  the  most  rational  and  illumined 
investigation  ?  Who  can  believe  that  the  appeal  to  conscience 
as  an  ultimate  authority  can  justify  an  affirmative  answer  to 
either  of  the  last  two  inquiries  ? 

The  truth  as  it  has  been  made  apparent  by  our  previous 


THE  MORAL  SELF  191 

discussion,  seems  to  be  that  conscience,  as  an  authoritative 
guide  to  conduct,  is  synonymous  with  the  total  moral  con- 
sciousness;   and    that   moreover,   this    moral    consciousness 
practically  involves  the  entire  distinctively  human  nature  of 
man.     Even  thus  understood,  conscience  provides  no  infalli- 
bility of  authority.     In  his  ethical,   as  well   as  in  his  more 
purely  sentient  and  cognitive  life  and  development,  man  has 
an  outfit  of  capabilities  which  quite  surpasses  that  of  any  of 
the  lower  animals.     He  is  a  really  ethical  Self  —  in  feeling, 
intellect,  and  will ;  and  they  are  not  even  inchoate  and  unde- 
veloped ethical  selves ;  although  they  are,  as  man  knows  them, 
self-like  in  all  their  characteristics.     Thus  man  is  capable  of 
self -conduct,  of  se^f-development.     But  neither  in  the  form  of 
"  instinctive  feeling,"    or  of  "  innate  idea,"   or  of  ''  rational 
principle,"  or  of  spontaneous  and  impulsive  or  deliberate  and 
intelligent  "  good  will,"  has  he  an  authoritative,  in  the  mean- 
ing of  an  infallible,  guide.     The  voice  that  is  within  liim  is 
often  feeble  and  uncertain  ;  it  is  always  possible  to  dispute  its 
authority,  to  gainsay  its  right,  and  to  reject  its  rule.     Just  in 
this   does  man's  imperfection  and  weakness,  as  well  as  his 
immorality  and  sinfulness  consist.     Nevertheless,  this  voice  is 
the   most  precious   possession  he   has,  the   most   significant 
value  of  his  whole   existence.     It  is,  indeed,  entitled   to  be 
called  "the  voice  of  God."     This   voice  calls  man  in  every 
voluntary  thought  and  feeling,  and  in  every  impulsive  deed  of 
will  as  well  as  every  intelligent  and  deliberate  choice,  to  strive 
after  the  realization  of  the  ideal  Self.     Every  form  or  particular 
exhibition  of  morally  good  conduct  is  —  in   however  special 
and  narrow  a  way  —  an  item  in  this  realization.     The  source 
of  the  authority  of  moral  consciousness  lies  in  the  response  of 
the  actual  Self  to  its   own  Ideal  of  self-hood.     This  is   that 
authority  of  conscience  which  thus  reveals  to  religion  a  rela- 
tion, that  is  dependent  upon  the  total  reaction  of  man's  moral 
consciousness,  between  the  human  Self  and  God. 

We  note  then  how  comprehensive  is  the  study  of  conscious- 


192  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

ness  as  the  source  of  ethical  obligation,  ethical  relations 
and  ethical  development.  The  conception  of  the  Moral  Self 
includes  all  that  descriptive  and  pragmatic  psychology  can 
discover  and  reveal  respecting  human  nature,  as  well  as  all 
the  sources  for  the  most  far-reaching  and  lofty  conclusions  of 
speculative  philosophy.  Moral  self-hood  is  the  all-inclusive 
nature  of  man.  That  all  those  activities  of  body  and  soul, 
whose  stimuli  and  laws  psycho-physics  and  psychology  de- 
light to  make  plain,  are  concerned  in  man's  conduct  is  too 
obvious  to  need  proof.  No  so-called  scientific  picture  of  his 
nature  is  completely  drawn  nor  is  the  final  significance  of 
his  constitution  understood,  until  he  is  seen  to  be  con- 
sciously, and  in  the  exercise  of  his  birthright  of  moral  free- 
dom adjusting  himself  to  the  morally  right  forms  of  actual 
relations  to  his  fellow-men.  Psychology,  although  it  is  pri- 
marily a  study  of  the  individual,  plainly  shows  that  he  is 
constituted  for  society ;  in  social,  that  is,  ethical  relations,  his 
entire  being  finds  its  supreme  exercise,  its  most  nearly 
complete  satisfaction.  The  Self  as  fitted  for  conduct,  and  as 
actively  engaged  in  the  moral  life,  is  the  largest  kind  of  a  Self 
with  which  psychological  science  can  deal.  And  all  the  in- 
vestigations of  psychology  —  "  new  "  or  "  old  "  —  have  a  cer- 
tain unsatisfactory  pettiness,  if  they  do  not  somehow,  either 
directly  or  indirectly,  contribute  to  our  knowledge  of  man 
considered  as  invested  with  the  power  to  constitute  and 
control  himself  in  manifold  social  relations  with  his  fellow- 
men.  In  spite  of  the  incessant  claims  of  psychological 
science  to  consideration  for  its  own  science'  sake,  we  cannot 
avoid  asking  ourselves  :  "  What  matters  it,  how  many  sigmas 
it  takes  to  react  to  this  or  that  form  of  stimulus  ;  or,  how 
the  bonds  of  associated  ideas  are  framed  and  broken;  or, 
how  intellect  develops  out  of  what  appears  to  be,  at  first,  a 
merely  mechanical  sequence  of  mental  images ;  unless,  in- 
deed, all  our  investigation  tends  to  give  us  more  insight  into 
the  nature  of  that  life,  three-fourths,  or  seven-eighths  of  which 


THE  MORAL  SELF  193 

is  conduct  having  reference  to  social  interests  and  to  the 
realization  of  the  ideals  of  the  race  ? "  The  psychology  of  the 
Moral  Self  includes  all  psychology,  because  the  right  and 
wrong  of  conduct  compasses  human  life  so  inclusively,  and 
because  the  values  here  concerned  are  so  extensively  present 
and  so  qualitatively  supreme. 

In  this  connection  the  significance  of  recent  studies  of  the 
individual  as  psychically  shaped  by  his  social  environment 
becomes  apparent.  Here  two  equally  mistaken  and  danger- 
ous extremes  are  to  be  avoided.  They  are  alike  unscientific 
in  their  disregard  of  each  other's  interests,  however  pertinent 
and  helpful  may  be  the  positive  suggestions  of  truth  to  which 
they  succeed  in  calling  the  attention  of  the  age.  Properly 
speaking,  there  is  no  such  consciousness  as  ''  social  conscious- 
ness "  and  no  such  existence  as  a  social  individual.  But 
if  by  the  phrase  we  mean  the  individual  man  as  influenced 
by  his  social  environment,  then  we  may  say :  The  Moral 
Self  encompasses  the  Social  Self ;  and  it  is  only  by  a  clear 
conception  of  what  is  included  in  the  former  term  that  one 
can  correctly  estimate  and  discreetly  judge  the  significance 
of  what  is  often  so  vaguely  connotated  by  the  latter  term. 
Of  the  two  extreme  views  upon  the  subject  one  tends  to  sink 
the  personality  of  the  individual  man  in  the  indiscriminate 
mass  of  his  social  surroundings  ;  the  other  tends  to  press  so 
far  the  independence  of  the  individual  as  to  depreciate  or 
neglect  the  influence  of  these  surroundings.  It  is  impossible 
for  a  true  person  to  exist  or  to  develop  outside  of  a  social  en- 
vironment. Against  both  these  extremes  the  preceding 
analysis  and  discussion  of  man's  moral  self-hood  has  both 
warned  us  and  provided  us  with  a  sufficient  safeguard. 

In  the  lower  stages  of  ethical  development  the  individual 
is,  indeed,  to  a  large  extent  the  product  of  his  social  environ- 
ment. He  feels  himself  obligated  to  do  that  which  this 
environment,  by  silent  custom,  or  by  spoken  and  written 
precept,  or  by  more   solemn   priestly  and  legal  decree,  has 

13 


194  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

decided  for  him  to  be  the  right  thing  to  do.  He  is  a  depend- 
ent piece  of  the  ethico-social  mechanism.  In  all  times  and 
places  very  largely,  and  in  some  times  and  places  almost 
universally  (as,  for  example,  even  now  in  India),  this  "  right 
thing"  to  do  which  the  social  environment  enforces  is,  for 
the  multitudes,  not  at  all  what  flesh  desires  or  heart  craves. 
Only  for  the  favored  few  are  the  pleasant  and  the  morally 
good  things  of  life  coincident  in  the  view  of  the  ethical 
authorities ;  among  the  millions  the  Social  Self  is  either  the 
unhappy  or  the  morally  bad  Self,  when  viewed  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  prevalent  ethics.  But  as  the  truly  Moral  Self 
undergoes  development,  —  or  rather,  I  might  almost  be 
permitted  to  say,  comes  into  being,  —  it  wins  more  of  that 
independence  of  judgment  and  of  action  which  is  essential  to 
any  considerable  approach  toward  a  realization  of  the  moral 
ideal.  Thus  the  conduct  of  the  individual  more  and  more 
freely  takes  up  into,  and  incorporates  with  itself  that  rational 
regard  for  social  considerations  which  stands  at  an  extreme 
both  from  the  blindly  affective  and  unthinking  acceptance 
of  the  social  standards  of  conduct  and  also  from  the  intelligent 
and  deliberate  but  immoral  departure  from  those  standards. 
A  social  being,  in  some  sort,  man  might  be,  if  he  had  no 
other  equipment  for  the  life  of  the  community  than  a  superior 
amount  of  those  characteristics  which  belong  to  the  lower 
animals,  —  if,  in  a  word,  he  were  not  a  Moral  Self.  But 
although  in  such  a  case  he  might  be,  in  some  conceivable 
meaning  of  the  word,  "  social,"  he  could  not  be  a  social  self. 
It  is  man's  moral  equipment,  the  essential  potentialities  of 
his  individual  personality,  which  makes  him  capable  of  form- 
ing a  true  human  society.  These  potentialities,  society,  whether 
considered  as  an  environment  or  as  a  continuous  self-propagat- 
ing force,  can  in  some  sort  develop,  but  can  never  originate 
or  impart.  The  philosophy  of  religion  has  its  theory  as  to 
whence  come  the  germs  of  that  moral  self-hood  which  includes 
the  true  social  self-hood.     Neither  ethnology  nor  psychology 


THE   MORAL  SELF  196 

can  inform  us  on  this  point.  Or,  rather,  properly  speaking, 
there  is  no  such  reality  for  these  sciences  as  a  social  Self ; 
the  term  is  but  a  figure  of  speech,  fitly  enough  designed,  it 
may  be,  to  remind  one  that  the  individual  man  could  never 
be,  or  develop  into  a  true  personality  were  it  not  for  the 
constant  and  most  potent  influence  of  other  personal  beings. 
When,  however,  ethics  speaks  intelligently  of  the  Moral  Self, 
it  sums  up  in  this  term  all  that  is  true  of  the  other  term,  and 
much  more.  And,  moreover,  ethics  is  using  no  figure  of 
speech  to  endanger  the  understanding  and  the  application  of 
its  terms,  as  do  psychology  and  ethnology  when  they  speak 
of  "  social  selves,"  *'  social  organisms,"  etc.  For  the  Moral 
Self  of  ethics  is  the  concrete  reality  of  the  individual  man, 
regarded  as  equipped  for  the  life  of  conduct  and  for  the 
development  of  character,  in  certain  definite  relations  with 
other  selves  equipped  in  substantially  like  manner.  Were  he 
not  moral,  man  could  not  be  social  in  the  highest  meaning  of 
the  word  ;  and  the  very  idea  of  morality  as  applied  to  man 
implies  his  existence,  activity,  and  development  in  the  midst 
of  society.  I  repeat :  Moral  selves  constitute  a  true  society  ; 
but  social  influences  can  never,  of  themselves,  constitute  or 
explain  the  existence  or  the  total  development  of  moral 
selves. 

The  conception  of  the  Moral  Self  contains  within  it  the 
germinal  thoughts  and  suggestions  for  a  philosophy  of  the 
Ideal  as  well  as  of  that  to  which  science  is  so  ready,  some- 
times quite  too  exclusively,  to  attribute  the  title  of  Reality ; 
in  this  conception,  therefore,  must  be  found  the  data  for 
reconciling  all  that  belongs  to  man's  scientific  tendencies, 
standards,  and  pursuits,  and  also  his  judgments  of  that 
which  has  value,  his  higher  sentiments,  the  longings  and 
obligations  which  bind  him  to  an  ideal  Good.  How  to  effect 
this  reconciliation  is,  indeed,  the  burning  question  of  this  as 
of  every  other  age ;  but  it  is  the  imperative  and  most  difficult 
problem  of  this  age  beyond  all  other  ages.     No  reconciliation 


196  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

can  be  accepted  for  longer  than  a  brief  breathing-spell  in  the 
hot  chase  after  the  final  and  satisfying  truth,  which  leaves 
man  divided  into  two  incommunicable  and  unrelated  parts, 
two  spheres  of  interest  and  experience.  Science,  on  the  one 
hand,  and  ethics,  art,  and  religion,  on  the  other  hand,  cannot 
be  allotted  separate  fields  in  the  domain  of  human  nature.  No 
form  of  the  dichotomy  of  man's  being  which  has  ever  been 
devised,  or  that  can  ever  possibly  be  devised,  will  long  remain 
satisfactory.  We  cannot  make  the  feeling  and  imagination 
responsible  for  faiths  which  run  contrary  to  scientific  con- 
clusions that  are  forced  upon  us  by  the  unfeeling  and  unim- 
aginative intellect.  We  cannot  believe  in  Ideals,  whether  of 
conduct,  or  of  beauty  or  of  worship,  which  contravene  the 
known  principles  of  E-eality  ;  neither  can  we  know  what  those 
principles  of  Reality  are,  in  their  highest  potency  and  com- 
pletest  significance,  without  crediting  for  their  discovery  and 
their  explication,  the  authority  of  ethical,  artistic,  and  religious 
Ideals.     The  Ideal  and  the  Real  must  he  a  Living  Unity. 

The  fundamental  reasons  for  dissatisfaction  with  the  demand 
of  religion  and  ethics  that  we  should  believe  and  practise  that 
which  science  condemns  or  doubts  are  not  to  be  found  in  the 
undoubted  weakness  of  the  arguments  of  either  of  the  two 
contending  parties.  The  moral  reformer,  the  artist,  or  the 
inspired  seer,  and  the  man  of  scientific  claims  and  culture, 
are,  as  a  rule,  about  equally  partisan,  equally  insufficient  as  to 
information  and  illogical  in  reasoning,  when  they  fall  out 
with  each  other  over  the  ultimate  problems  of  existence  and 
of  human  life.  The  fundamental  reasons  why  they  can 
neither  of  them  be  accorded  a  full  satisfaction  are  deep-set 
and  ineradicable  in  the  nature  of  them  both.  These  reasons 
lie  in  the  same  unity  of  human  Self-hood  which  is  common  to 
them  both.  You  cannot  array  man  against  himself.  A  schis- 
matic psychology  is  the  original  heresy,  the  root  of  all  other 
schisms.  Reason  and  Science  so-called  must  listen  appreciat- 
ingly  to  the  feeling  and  judgment  in  their  loving  estimate 


THE  MORAL  SELF  197 

of  that  which  has  value  ;  and  ethical,  aesthetical,  and  religious 
ideas  and  sentiments  must  make  themselves  rational  and  ao» 
cordant  with  the  truths  of  science.  The  possibility  and  the 
necessity  for  such  a  reconciling  process  are  discoverable  in 
the  very  nature  of  cognition  and  of  the  cognitive  mind.^ 

It  is,  however,  the  conception  of  man's  moral  being  which 
shows  how  a  reconciliation  may  be  effected  between  the  claims 
of  science  and  the  claims  of  ethical,  aesthetical,  and  religious 
sentiment  and  idealization.  For  all  science  itself  is  the  pur- 
suit and  the  product  of  the  Moral  Self.  When  we  compre- 
hend the  entire  extent  of  the  ethical  sphere  and  the  full 
content  of  ethical  principles  and  ethical  ideals,  scientific 
pursuits  themselves  become  matters  of  conduct ;  and  the  scien- 
tific Truth  itself  attains  to  the  condition  where  it  has  value  in 
its  relations  to  the  life  of  conduct.  The  patience,  candor, 
exactness  of  observation  and  carefulness  of  testing  and  atten- 
tion to  logical  completeness,  upon  which  scientific  method  so 
much  insists,  are  an  ethical  procedure.  These  are  the 
peculiar  virtues  of  the  man  of  science,  quoad  scientific.  If 
his  virtues  in  society,  or  on  Sunday,  are  quite  different  from 
these,  or  even  if  the  more  conspicuously  social  and  religious 
virtues  are  lacking,  his  work-a-day  and  laboratory  excellences 
are  of  a  truly  moral  sort.  The  moral  self-hood  must  go  into 
any  man's  science  or  it  is  not  his  science  at  all. 

Why,  from  the  merely  scientific  point  of  view,  should  the 
human  mind  attach  any  idea  of  worth  to  truth  or  to  its  dis- 
covery ?  The  animals,  which  are  only  partial  selves  and  not 
really  moral  selves  at  all,  give  not  —  so  far  as  I  am  aware  — 
the  slightest  distinguishable  token  of  regarding  the  acquire- 
ment of  knowledge  as  a  matter  of  ideal  significance.  They 
never  exclaim  :  "  I  read  thy  thoughts  after  thee,  0  God  ;  "  nor 
do  they  strut  about  with  the  appearance  of  a  conscious  pridef 
of  possessing  an  ideal  good  as  they  do  show  pride  in  the  suc- 

1  This  thought  has  been  anticipated  and  wrought  out  in  its  preliminary  aspects 
in  my  work  on  the  "  Philosophy  of  Knowledge." 


198  PHILOSOPHY   OF  CONDUCT 

cessful  strife  for  sensuous  goods.  It  is  only  a  moral  nature  that 
feels  the  obligation,  by  a  virtuous  and  painstaking  self-denial, 
to  attain  the  facts  in  each  case  ;  that  appreciates  in  a  quasi- 
ethical  way  the  success  of  all  scientific  efforts ;  and  that 
regards  the  Truth  as  worthy  of  being  thus  striven  after, 
because  —  somehow  or  other  —  belonging  to  the  domain  of 
the  "  in-itself-Good." 

Therefore,  the  more  highly  science  estimates  itself  for  its 
own  self's  sake,  the  more  does  it  testify  to  the  value  of  human 
conduct  in  the  pursuit  of  an  ideal  Good.  And  inasmuch  as  the 
man  who  enters  upon  or  pursues  a  so-called  scientific  career 
with  an  obvious  regard  only  for  his  own  selfish  interests  and 
an  obvious  disregard  of  the  interests  of  "  the  cause  of  science," 
or  "  the  public  welfare,"  or  "  society  at  large,"  is  blamed  if  not 
execrated  for  his  badness  morally,  it  is  evident  that  the  ideal 
interests  of  ethics  are,  in  however  indirect  and  concealed 
fashion,  nevertheless  supreme.  One  cannot,  indeed,  maintain 
that  every  failure  to  attain  and  state  the  truth  of  fact  or 
of  principle  is  blameworthy  ;  or  that  every  manner  and  form  of 
telling  the  truth  is  justifiable ;  but  the  highly  significant  fact 
is  this  :  It  is  the  ethical  nature  of  man  which  makes  him 
appreciate  the  value  of  the  end  at  which  science  aims,  as  well 
as  the  morally  worthy  features  of  the  mind's  activity  in  pur- 
suit of  this  end.  Only  the  Moral  Self  is  fitted  to  regard  truth, 
and  the  effort  to  know  truth,  as  an  essential  part  of  the  ideal 
Good.  Thus  science  becomes  merged  in  the  perfection  of 
that  supreme  moral  Ideal  which  is  a  society  of  moral  selves. 
In  the  language  of  religion :  The  Kingdom  of  Truth  becomes 
identical  —  reconciled  —  with  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven,  or  the 
ideal  social  community  of  morally  perfect  selves.  This  dis- 
tinctly ethical  way  of  regarding  man's  relation  to  all  conceiv- 
able truth,  which  physical  science  appreciates  only  as  the  proper 
attitude  of  its  students  toward  Nature,  is,  of  course,  only  a 
hint  toward  the  most  profound  and  satisfying  reconciliation  of 
the  ideas  and  judgments  of  worth  with  the  spirit  and  achieve- 


THE  MORAL  SELF  199 

ments  of  the  scientific  mind.  But  it  is,  at  least,  a  hint  in  the 
right  direction.  The  later  speculative  endeavors  of  ethics  are 
surely  bound  to  return  again  to  the  suggestion,  and  to  carry 
the  suggestion  out  to  its  rational  conclusion  in  a  declaration 
of  peace  between  the  domain  of  the  Real  in  fact  and  the  Ideals 
that  have  value  for  the  moral  life. 

In  all  the  foregoing  analyses  I  have  coupled  ethics  with 
aesthetics  and  religion  as  belonging,  with  them,  to  the  same 
sphere  of  the  Ideal.  I  have  also  spoken  as  though  all  the 
inconsistencies  and  seeming  contradictions  which  exist,  in  fact 
and  in  the  history  of  the  race,  between  the  ideals  of  conduct 
and  the  ideals  of  art  and  religion  must  find  their  reconcile- 
ment in  the  conception  of  the  perfect  Moral  Self.  With 
certain  qualifications  this  is  true.  The  interests  and  the 
ideals  of  art  are  by  no  means  always  obviously  identical  —  not 
to  say,  reconcilable  —  with  the  interests  of  morality  and  tho 
ideals  of  conduct.  Neither  can  we  in  an  offhand  way  force 
into  coincidence  the  apparently  diverging  lines  of  ethical  and 
of  religious  opinions,  practices,  and  development.  But,  for 
all  this,  the  conception  of  the  Moral  Self  remains  the  most 
widely  inclusive  which  the  mind  can  form  of  human  nature  ; 
and  when  expanded  to  its  widest  legitimate  limits,  this  con- 
ception includes  the  suggestions  necessary  for  reconciling  all 
the  conflicts  amongst  these  three  classes  of  ideals  and  of  ideal 
values.  Only  this  qualification  must  be  added  :  —  so  far  as  the 
formation  and  the  realization  of  the  Ideal  depends  upon  human 
conduct  under  any  conceivable  social  relations. 

The  analysis  of  the  moral  consciousness  has  already  shown 
us  how  many  elements  are  common  to  it  with  that  form  of 
consciousness  with  which  men  greet  the  Beautiful,  as  well 
as  with  those  closely  allied  forms  of  thought  and  feeling  which 
lead  to  the  life  of  religious  worship  and  of  obedience  to  God. 
Indeed,  fche  artistic  nature  and  the  ethical  nature  of  man 
have  so  many  roots  in  common  that  it  is  difficult  to  separate 
them  without  stopping  the  flow  of  vital  sap  into  both  the  life 


200  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

of  conduct  and  the  life  of  beauty.  And  it  is  only  necessary 
to  spread  the  mantle  of  one  great  Idea  over  the  conception  of 
ethics  in  order  to  give  a  religious  signification  and  an  "  other- 
worldly "  radiance  to  the  whole  subject.  The  somewhat  un- 
couth compound  "  ethico-religious  "  is  indicative  of  a  profundity 
of  experience  as  great  as  that  in  which  such  phrases  as  the 
"  Beauty  of  Holiness,"  and  eine  schone  Seele,  have  their  origin. 
In  trying  also  to  comprehend  what,  in  essence,  is  common  to 
all  the  kinds  of  the  "•  in-itself-Good,"  and  yet  to  keep  some- 
how distinct  the  good  of  beauty,  the  morally  good,  and  the 
All-Good,  we  found  ourselves  encompassed  with  the  same 
Unity  in  variety.  The  metaphysics  which  grows  out  of  such  ex- 
periences belongs  either  to  the  more  speculative  part  of  ethics, 
or  to  aesthetics,  or,  finally,  to  the  philosophy  of  religion.  But 
the  student  of  ethics  must  not  fail  at  this  point  to  feel  the  full 
weight  of  the  impression  that  man  is  fitted  and  obligated  to  seek 
the  Goods  of  art,  and  of  religion ;  that  the  attainment  of  these 
ideal  ends  is,  at  least  in  a  limited  way,  dependent  upon  his 
own  conduct,  both  that  of  the  individual  and  that  of  the  race ; 
and  that  in  the  general  movement  of  human  society,  what  is 
achieved  for  the  better  appreciation  and  finer  representation  of 
the  beautiful  in  nature  and  in  human  life  as  well  as  all  the  grow- 
ing knowledge  of  God  and  the  improved  adjustment  of  human 
relations  to  Him,  and,  for  His  sake,  of  men  to  one  another,  is 
an  integral  part  of  the  ethical  development  of  the  race.  All 
this  lies  within  the  sphere  of  human  conduct.  And  man  is 
capable  of  it,  responsible  for  it,  successful  or  unsuccessful  in 
it,  only  because  he  is  a  Moral  Self, 

Those  great  principles,  however,  which  are  true  for  the 
other  main  branches  of  philosophy  are  also  true  for  the  phi- 
losophy of  conduct.  These  principles,  as  I  have  elsewhere^ 
said,  group  themselves  about  "  two  comprehensive  concep- 
tions which  seem  to  us  to  be  shaping  the  thought  and  the 
conduct  of  the  present  age.     They  are,  of  course,  not  new, 

1  A  Theorj  of  Reality,  p.  31. 


THE  MORAL  SELF  201 

either  in  their  total  complexion  or  in  any  of  their  more 
important  factors,  otherwise  they  could  not  be  so  compre- 
hensive and  influential  as  they  are.  But  they  are  receiving 
new  and  enlarged  meanings;  they  are  made  to  serve  more 
extended  and  illumining  uses.  These  are  the  conception  of 
Evolution,  of  the  principle  of  becoming,  and  the  conception 
of  Self-hood,  especially  as  having  its  roots  in,  and  as  reaching 
out  into,  social  connections."  It  is  enlarged  and  truer  notions 
of  Personality  and  of  Development  which  are  sought  by  the 
reflective  thinking  of  the  age. 

When,  then,  such  fulness  of  significance  and  range  of 
influence  are  claimed  for  the  conception  of  the  Moral  Self, 
it  must  not  be  imagined  that  any  of  the  legitimate  rights  of 
the  other  conception,  the  conception  of  Evolution,  are  iti- 
vaded  or  denied.  The  history  of  morals,  and  the  current 
opinions  and  practices  of  the  time,  as  well  as  all  the  most 
profound  and  comprehensive  of  ethical  principles,  cannot 
be  understood  without  giving  due  influence  to  both  these 
conceptions.  TTie  Moral  Self,  in  a  process  of  Development 
toward  the  Social  Ideal,  —  this  complex  of  conceptions  con- 
tains the  whole  domain  of  investigation  for  the  student  of 
ethics.  What  is  the  essential  nature  of  the  subject  of  con- 
duct, the  ethical  being  of  man  ?  It  is  moral  self-hood  ;  it 
has  already  been  described.  But  for  every  individual  man, 
and  for  the  whole  race  of  men,  conduct  is  some  sort  of  a 
career ;  it  is  subject  to  the  principle  of  continuity ;  it  is  a 
matter  of  history,  and  of  the  growth  from  beginnings  toward 
ends,  in  the  ongoing  of  time;  it  is  something  which  can 
neither  be  described,  nor  even  be  conceived  of,  except  as  the 
individual  is  regarded  in  his  physical,  and  especially  in  his 
social  environment.  The  principle  of  Evolution  applies,  then, 
in  ethics  ;  but  in  no  superficial  or  merely  external  way.  The 
Moral  Self  is  a  life  growth,  and  so  subject  —  although  on  its 
own  special  terms,  as  it  were  —  to  a  continuous  development. 

Here,  however,  must  the  word  of  caution  be  uttered  which 


202  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

is  confirmed  by  an  analysis  of  the  individual  man,  as  well  as 
by  a  study  of  the  history  of  the  individual  and,  so  far  as 
possible,  of  the  race.  The  equipment  which  makes  man 
capable  of  conduct  at  all,  and  which  furnishes  his  first 
incitement  to  strive  after  the  ethical  ideal,  as  well  as  the 
feelings  and  resulting  judgments  that  evaluate  conduct,  can 
never  itself  be  accounted  for  as  the  mechanical  resultant  of 
an  evolutionary  process.  The  conception  of  endowment  is  the 
only  one  which  will  meet  the  facts  in  the  case.  The  psycho- 
logical study  of  the  moral  nature  is  competent  to  decide  this 
question  for  the  individual  man  of  to-day ;  and  such  study 
does  decide  it.  Ethnological  study  is  not  competent  to  give 
us  the  complete  and  trustworthy  picture  of  the  moral  nature 
of  the  so-called  ''  primitive  man."  It  will  probably,  in  spite 
of  many  interesting  details  which  await  observation  respect- 
ing the  customs  and  ethical  opinions  of  rude  and  barbarous 
tribes,  never  be  in  a  position  to  guarantee  such  a  picture. 
But,  as  Wundt  has  well  said :  The  one  incontestable  fact  in  this 
field  of  uncertainty  and  conjecture  is  that  "however  far  back  we 
push  historical  inquiry,  and  however  low  the  stage  of  civiliza- 
tion that  we  choose  for  observation,  mankind  appears  always 
and  everywhere  as  subject  to  the  same  good  and  evil  impulses 
which  constitute  to-day  the  sources  of  its  happiness  and 
misery."  1  Moreover,  we  may  claim  with  equal  confidence 
that  man  always  and  everywhere  appears  as  giving  a  prefer- 
ence, for  their  own  inherent  value,  to  some  kinds  of  conduct 
rather  than  to  others ;  as  feeling  the  bond  of  obligation  which 
ties  him  to  his  fellows  with  common  rights  and  reciprocal 
duties  ;  and  as  appreciating  those  who  voluntarily  recognize 
the  sacredness  of  this  bond  for  their  superior  worth  when 
compared  with  tliose  who,  in  the  pursuit  of  their  own  pleasure, 
or  in  the  avoidance  of  pains  for  themselves,  prove  recreant 
to  this  bond.  And  if  biology,  invading  the  proper  field  of 
ethnology,  and  of  history,  and  making  bold  to  contradict  all 

1  Ethics,  I,  p.  127. 


THE  MORAL   SELF  208 

the  conclusions  of  psychological  ethics,  chooses  to  please 
itself  with  the  speculative  conception  of  an  ancestral,  non- 
moral  man,  the  student  of  ethics  must,  on  the  one  hand, 
confess  his  total  ignorance  of  the  existence  of  any  such 
being,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  must  insist  upon  the  obvious 
truth  that  such  a  being  is  not  capable  of  conduct  at  all, 
is  not  man  in  any  meaning  which  ethics  can  attach  to  the 
word.  In  any  event,  ethics  does  not  deal  with  beings  that 
are  not  already,  potentially,  moral  selves ;  it  finds  itself 
compelled  to  take  as  its  essential  datum,  the  endowment 
of  moral  self-hood,  as  this  endowment  has  already  been 
described. 

But  after  discovering  and  comprehending  in  a  measure, 
the  significance  of  this  datum,  ethics  welcomes,  because  ethics 
imperatively  needs,  the  conception  of  Evolution.  This  con- 
ception, as  quite  certainly  applying  both  to  the  individual 
man,  and  also  to  the  race,  it  expands  and  illustrates  on  the 
basis  of  experience  in  somewhat  the  following  way.  The 
three  factors  of  feeling,  ideation,  and  volition,  enter  into  all 
the  behavior  and  the  development  of  man  considered  as  a 
Moral  Self.  In  the  individual,  and  in  the  race,  three  stages 
of  development  may  be,  somewhat  vaguely,  and  yet  on  the 
whole  satisfactorily,  distinguished  as  characterizing  the  life 
of  humanity.  The  first  and  lowest  grade  of  action  which 
can  be  called  conduct  —  or,  at  least,  can  be  said  to  contain 
the  germ  of  conduct  —  combines  the  idea  of  an  action  with  a 
feeling  of  ought  or  ought-not,  with  reference  to  that  action, 
and  an  estimate  of  worth  or  unworthiness  for  the  person 
performing  the  action.  In  this  complex,  and  often  confused 
state  of  consciousness,  which  is  always  of  necessity  more  or 
less  painful  or  pleasurable,  the  moral  life  of  man  has  its 
birth.  The  whole  affair  is  concrete  and  individual,  a  here- 
and-now  fact  of  experience  which,  as  a  conscious  process, 
looks  neither  backward  nor  forward  for  its  sanctions. 

In  the  second  stage  of  ethical  development,   that  which 


204  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

was  entirely  concrete  and  individual,  has  become  in  some 
measure  generalized  and  universal ;  but  the  same  factors 
characterize  this  stage,  although  modified  in  form  of  mani- 
festation according  to  those  general  laws  which  control  the 
entire  progress  of  the  mental  life.  And  now  the  improved 
discriminating  consciousness,  acting  upon  an  acquired  wealth 
of  experience,  estimates  two  or  more  actions  with  reference, 
either  to  their  consequences,  or  to  their  seemingly  inherent 
moral  characteristics,  approves  of  one,  and  disapproves  of 
others,  chooses  and  resolves  in  a  way  to  bring  into  clearer 
consciousness  the  feeling  of  moral  freedom ;  and  thus  the 
man  takes  the  necessary  steps  in  the  formation  of  virtuous 
or  vicious  habits.  By  repeated  actions  of  this  sort,  virtuous 
or  vicious  habits  are  actually  formed,  and  the  character- 
istically good  or  bad  quality  of  the  Moral  Self  becomes 
determined. 

As  I  have  already  shown,  during  this  second  stage  of 
evolution,  the  social  influences  are  most  directly  powerful ; 
although  they  operate  with  little  accompaniment,  for  the 
most  part,  of  any  attempt  to  subject  these  influences  them- 
selves to  a  more  purely  ethical  testing,  by  comparing  them 
with  ideals  that  appear  to  have  for  the  enlightened  conscious- 
ness a  higher  value  than  the  current  judgments  and  customs 
of  society.  Beyond  this  second  stage,  most  men  for  the 
most  part  do  not  attempt  to  go.  And  for  the  multitudes  of 
men  everywhere,  and  in  all  times,  this  amount  of  ethical 
advance  is  usually  satisfactory.  Indeed,  in  the  less  highly 
civilized  communities,  through  lack  of  the  stimulus  of  in- 
tellectual and  aesthetical  as  well  as  of  ethical  ideals,  and  also 
on  account  of  an  unfavorable  physical  and  social  environment, 
much  progress  beyond  this  stage  is  usually  impossible,  or 
at  least  extremely  difficult.  Yet  vague  glimpses  of  some- 
thing more  beyond  and  higher  up  in  that  scale  of  being  by 
which  the  evolution  of  human  morality  is  measured,  come  to 
the  eyes  and  ears  even  of  the  multitude.     Especially  are  such 


THE  MORAL  SELF  206 

glimpses  given  to  them  in  their  religious  experiences.  The 
right  behavior  toward  the  gods,  is  conceived  of  as  something 
better  and  nobler  than  the  best  of  the  actions  decreed  to  be 
right  by  human  society.  If  only  men  were  gods,  and  dwelt 
with  them  in  their  more  favorable  surroundings,  their  ideals 
of  conduct  might  be  still  loftier  by  far,  and  yet  without 
transcending  the  possibilities  of  that  moral  freedom  which  is 
so  strictly  limited  as  their  possession  under  existing  cir- 
cumstances. Let  it,  then,  at  least  be  an  ideal  which  shall 
bring  some  further  unification  into  human  lives,  so  to  con- 
duct them  as  perchance,  by  and  by,  to  go  and  live  the  diviner 
life  in  its  more  favorable  environment. 

And  so,  with  all  souls  in  some  manner,  and  with  some  few 
souls  in  a  most  blessed  and  glorious  manner,  the  last  stage  in 
the  evolution  of  the  Moral  Self  is  reached.  The  various  ideas 
of  what  is  always  and  everywhere  right  —  right  here  and 
under  such  circumstances,  and  right  there  and  under  differing 
circumstances  —  are  gathered,  or  rather  (more  frequently) 
gather  themselves,  into  some  shape  of  an  Ideal.  Under  its 
influence  the  originally  segregated,  and  somewhat  spasmodic 
feelings  of  oughtness  become  unified;  they  develop  into  a 
more  constant  feeling  of  obligation,  often  passionate  and  yet 
rational,  to  strive  as  far  as  possible  to  realize  for  ourselves 
and  for  others  this  grand  conception.  Thus  it  comes  about, 
that  the  entire  practical  life  of  the  individual  falls  pro- 
gressively under  the  controlling  influence  of  the  distinctively 
ethical  ideas,  and  ethical  emotions.  The  essential  factors 
and  prominent  aspects  of  such  a  devotion  may  remain  the 
same  amidst  a  number  of  forms  in  which  the  Ideal  assumes 
more  definite  outlines,  and  in  spite  of  a  great  variety  of 
concrete  habits  of  action  under  varying  conditions  and 
changes  in  the  social  environment.  This  Ideal  may  be  the 
idea  of  a  so-called  "  moral  law,"  or  the  idea  of  a  perfected 
personality,  or  the  idea  of  the  Divine  Will ;  or  it  may  be 
some  yet  more  inclusive  form  of  a  social  constitution.     With 


206  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

one  good  man  the  object  which  seems  worthy  of  commanding 
him  may  be  conceived  of  as  an  impersonal  principle,  an 
unselfish  and  unswerving  obedience  to  which  is  recognized  as 
summing  up  the  entire  obligation  of  man.  With  another, 
the  conception  of  an  infinitely  worthy  personal  Being,  in 
whose  personal  characteristics  they  may  share  who  make  the 
attainment  of  this  ideal  the  object  of  their  life  endeavor,  may 
be  substituted  for  the  conception  of  an  impersonal  principle. 
With  another,  the  perfectibility,  by  human  efforts,  of  society 
seems  to  furnish  the  good  to  strive  for  which  with  the  stren- 
uous life,  is  the  whole  duty  of  him  who  would  attain  the 
supreme  moral  Good. 

Each  of  these,  and  all  other  forms  of  defining  that  Ideal 
which  is  the  perfect  satisfaction  and  permanent  source  of 
inspiration  for  the  development  of  moral  Self-hood,  is  quite 
likely  to  be  marred  by  deficiencies,  or  to  include  subordinate 
elements  which  would  better  be  left  out.  The  possibility  of 
a  sound  speculative  treatment  of  this  Ideal  will  come  before 
us  for  discussion  later  on.  But  I  wish  now  to  call  attention 
to  the  truth  that  the  very  attempt  to  form  any  ideal  of 
conduct  in  so  comprehensive  and  lofty  a  fashion,  and  to  place 
the  ideal  upon  a  basis  of  experience,  while  admitting  the 
necessity  for  trusting  the  better  sentiments  and  the  artistic 
imagination,  marks  a  high  stage  in  the  moral  evolution  of 
mankind. 

But  the  Moral  Ideal  is  itself  the  subject  of  Evolution, — 
necessarily  so,  for  it  is  the  mental  construct  of  the  Moral  Self, 
and  therefore  dependent  for  its  very  excellence  upon  the  stage 
in  its  own  moral  development  which  the  constructing  mind 
has  reached.  And  moral  development  here  includes  all  kinds 
of  development;  for  they  all  are  dependent  in  a  measure 
upon  man's  own  conduct;  and  man's  conduct  is  the  sphere 
of  morality.  In  reaching  this  conclusion,  however,  I  have 
already  gone  far  in  advance  of  the  position  where  the  facts 
of  psychological   ethics   can  be   confidently   relied   upon   to 


I 


THE  MORAL  SELF  207 

defend  me.  We  must,  then,  return  to  the  study  of  experience 
from  another  allied  but  different  point  of  view,  and  consider 
what  habits  of  conduct  men  have  agreed  to  call  "  virtuous," 
what  "  vicious,"  and  how  one  may  explain,  justify,  and 
properly  apply  such  terms  as  these. 


i 


PAET  SECOND 
THE  VIRTUOUS  LIFE 


14 


"  And  lie  shall  he  like  a  tree  planted  hy  the  rivers  of  water ^  that  hringeth 
forth  his  fruit  in  his  season ;  his  leaf  also  shall  not  wither  /  and  whatsoever 
he  doeth  shall  prosper.^*  Psalm,  i.  3. 


CHAPTER  X 

CLASSIFICATION  OF  THE  VIRTUES 

One  of  the  most  suggestive  of  ethical  facts  is  the  pertinacity 
with  which  men  everywhere  cling  to  a  certain  twofold  divi- 
sion of  the  kinds  of  conduct.  All  conduct  is  in  their  judgment 
to  be  esteemed  either  good  or  bad,  either  worthy  of  approba- 
tion because  it  is  right,  or  of  disapproval  and  ill-desert  on 
account  of  its  quality  of  being  wrong.  Hence  those  habits  of 
action  which  belong  to  the  one  class  are  called  virtues ;  and 
the  virtues  have  their  corresponding  opposites,  the  so-called 
vices  of  mankind.  This  distinction  persists  everywhere  and 
under  all  conditions  of  moral  evolution,  in  spite  of  all  attempts 
to  minimize  or  explain  it  away.  To  its  significant  truth 
and  exceeding  worth  in  determining  all  manner  of  human 
interests,  the  language,  the  customs,  and  the  ethical  opinions 
of  men  bear  an  indisputable  witness. 

It  is  true  that  increasing  culture  usually  makes  the  mind, 
within  certain  limits,  less  prompt  and  self-confident  in  pro- 
nouncing upon  the  genuine  qualities  of  particular  cases  of 
conduct.  Quite  too  frequently  it  is  ignorance  or  self-con- 
ceit which  appropriates  the  title  of  "  virtue "  to  one's  own 
favored  forms  of  behavior,  and  then  assigns  the  opprobrious 
term  of  a  vice  to  all  departures  from  these  forms.  Especially 
does  this  appear  to  be  true  when  we  consider  that  all  human 
means  for  testing  the  real  qualities  of  conduct  are  so  uncertain. 
In  the  case  of  others,  particularly,  the  chances  of  mistake  are 
threefold.  There  is,  first,  the  chance  which  comes  from 
the  uncertain  character  of  the  sign  to  be  interpreted.    For 


212  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

example :  did  the  attempted  assassin  of  the  Shah  of  Persia, 
in  Paris,  in  the  summer  of  1900,  at  the  precise  moment 
when  he  pulled  the  trigger  of  the  pistol  still  intend  to  com- 
mit murder,  and  was  his  failure  due  solely  to  a  defect  in 
the  weapon ;  or  did  he  at  the  last  instant  falter  in  purpose 
and  thus  make  an  ethically  incomplete  event  of  the  final 
result?  The  expert  in  weapons  can  give  only  a  probable 
answer  to  such  a  question,  even  when  he  has  carefully  exam- 
ined the  condition  of  the  pistol  and  considered  the  external 
behavior  of  the  assassin.  But  there  is,  second,  the  chance 
of  mistake  which  comes  from  a  defective  or  a  prejudiced 
mind  on  the  part  of  him  who  attempts  the  task  of  ethical 
interpretation.  How  difficult  it  is  for  the  ordinary  Occidental 
to  estimate  duly  the  virtues  and  the  vices  of  the  Orient ;  for 
the  Anglo-Indian  to  understand  the  Hindu,  the  German  the 
Chinese,  and  the  American  the  Filipino  !  There  is  also,  third, 
the  special  chance  of  failure  to  which  even  those  best  fitted  to 
estimate  conduct  are  always  liable ;  and  which  comes  from  the 
quite  generally  complicated  and  subtle  character  of  the  thing 
to  be  estimated.  Finally,  we  are  reminded  that  all  individual 
men,  and  all  tribes  and  conditions  of  human  kind,  have  their 
own  somewhat  peculiar  virtues  and  vices ;  moreover  that  the 
virtues  of  one  are  esteemed  the  vices  of  another,  and  that  the 
standards  of  virtue  and  vice  are  changeable  from  place  to 
place  and  from  age  to  age. 

Such  considerations  as  the  foregoing  must  undoubtedly  be 
taken  into  the  account  by  any  one  who  would  draw  a  correct 
picture  of  the  Virtuous  Life  as  it  is  displayed  and  estimated 
in  the  moral  evolution  of  the  race.  But  they  do  not  in  the 
least  alter  the  significance  or  impair  the  value  of  this  dis- 
tinction in  the  kinds  of  conduct.  For  the  fundamental  fact 
is  that  men  universally  make  the  distinction  somehow ;  and 
that  the  distinction  is  always  a  twofold  distinction.  The 
distinction  itself  is  always,  therefore,  a  germinal  theory  of 
virtue,  —  an  attempt,  to  appreciate  the  implications  of  which 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  THE  VIRTUES  213 

is  an  introduction  to  a  valid  opinion,  based  upon  universal 
experience,  as  to  the  true  nature  of  virtue  and  its  opposite. 
It  is,  as  well,  a  valuable  hint  for  the  application  of  the  theory 
of  virtue  to  the  practice  of  the  virtues. 

In  order,  however,  to  form  inductively  a  theory  of  the 
virtues  and  vices  it  would  be  desirable,  if  possible,  to  begin 
by  taking  the  distinction  of  good  (or  virtuous)  and  bad 
(or  vicious)  habits  of  conduct  as  it  is  found  expressed  in 
its  lowest  and,  therefore,  most  unsatisfactory  terms.  Here  all 
is  vague  and  apparently  confused  ;  but  it  is  spontaneous,  naive, 
and  so  the  more  valuable  for  the  student  of  the  philosophy  of 
the  moral  life.  One  does  not  need,  however,  to  rummage  the 
field  of  ethnological  facts  with  a  view  to  discover  precisely 
how  many  distinguishable  virtues,  how  many  vices,  have  re- 
ceived recognition  by  the  whole  race  of  mankind  in  all  places 
of  its  existence  and  all  stages  of  its  development.  To  consult 
philology  as  to  the  origin  and  meaning  of  the  different 
words  which  have  stood  for  the  idea  of  virtue  in  general  or 
for  the  particular  virtues  would,  doubtless,  be  a  more  reward- 
ing task.  We  may,  with  sufficient  accuracy  for  our  purpose, 
summarize  the  net  results  of  both  these  lines  of  investigation 
in  the  following  statements.  And,  first,  as  to  the  essential 
meaning  of  the  words  for  virtue  in  general  and  for  the  par- 
ticular virtues :  they  all  evince  some  form  of  embodying  the 
thought  that  certain  ways  of  doing  things  are  entitled  to  be 
considered  preferable,  more  excellent,  better,  or  best.  To  the 
unreflecting  human  consciousness,  this  does  not  seem  to 
mean  so  much  that  it  is  better  for  a  man  to  be  virtuous  than 
not  to  be  virtuous ;  it,  the  rather,  seems  to  mean  that  to  be 
virtuous  is  to  be  the  better,  or  the  best,  as  respect  one's 
conduct  and  character.  In  what  respect  "  better "  or  by 
virtue  of  what  peculiar  advantages  or  special  characteristics 
"best"?  —  this  is  a  question  about  the  answer  to  which  the 
words  that  express  the  different  particular  virtues,  do  not,  of 
themselves,  by  any  means  always  clearly  pronounce.     Where, 


214  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

however,  they  do  reveal  the  subtler  thought  and  finer  feeling 
that  is  in  them,  they  call  attention  to  the  existence  in  human 
consciousness  of  an  ethical  Ideal. 

The  indeterminate  but  important  answer  which  the  instinc- 
tive expression  of  human  thought  gives  to  inquiry  into  the 
conception  of  the  virtuous  life  is  therefore  this :  The  virtues 
are  the  habitual  modes  of  the  conduct  of  the  person  who  is  the 
better,  the  best,  the  most  worthy  and  admirable,  the  noblest 
man.  If  then  we  ask  :  "  In  what  sense  are  courage,  constancy, 
justice,  wisdom,  kindness,  generosity,  better  than  cowardice, 
fickleness,  injustice,  folly,  cruelty,  meanness?"  the  answer 
is :  "  These  are  the  ways  of  the  behavior  of  the  '  better '  men.'* 
Or,  to  translate  into  terms  which  further  investigation  must 
justify  more  fully  :  In  the  thought  of  mankind,  the  virtues  are 
those  habitual  forms  of  conduct  which  realize  the  conception  of 
the  better  and  nobler  Self.  All  naming  of  the  virtues  indicates 
a  "  constant  and  especial  attention  to  the  praiseworthy  features 
of  human  personality."  The  virtuous  man  is  the  good  man  ; 
virtue  is  manliness  and  steadfastness  of  character ;  it  is  the 
best,  because  the  fittest  and  noblest  thing  for  a  man  to  have.^ 

In  the  second  place,  the  philosophy  of  conduct  may  borrow 
from  ethnology  the  conclusion  which  rests  upon  its  induction 
of  facts :  There  are  many  startling  divergencies  from  the 
opinions,  now  current  among  the  most  ethically  advanced 
communities,  as  to  the  correct  list  of  the  virtues ;  but  these 
divergencies  do  not  destroy,  they  rather  make  more  impressive 

1  Thus  the  Greeks  used  ayaQ6s  to  indicate  the  most  manly  personal  characteris- 
tics, —  especially,  bravery  in  battle  for  the  state  and  nobility  of  bearing.  Virtus 
in  Latin  emphasized  the  same  traits  of  good  manliness.  The  connection  of  the 
English  and  German  words  for  "  good  "  with  the  German  Gatte  indicates  the 
emphasis  which  these  languages  place  upon  personal  "  fitness "  in  the  virtuous 
life.  In  Greek,  again,  virtue  {dperi])  =that  which,  for  a  man,  is  best  (Hpiarros). 
But  the  man  is  bad  and  vicious,  he  is  no  man  worthy  to  be  called  a  man,  who  is 
lacking  in  these  fundamental  qualifications.  And  where  the  influence  of  allied 
religious  conceptions  is  distinctly  felt,  the  idea  of  stain  and  defilement  becomes 
more  emphatic.  The  bad  man  has  a  darkened  and  soiled  Selfhood.  In  Latin 
malus,  and  in  Greek  fxe\as  (black),  and  in  Sanskrit  malas  (from  ma/am,  dirt),  seem 
to  incorporate  this  way  of  thinking. 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  THE  VIRTUES  215 

a  certain  fundamental  agreement.  They  are  due  chiefly  to 
differences  of  emphasis,  differences  of  application  in  depend- 
ence upon  the  existing  physical  and  social  environment,  and 
differences  in  those  wide-spreading  moral  and  spiritual  ten- 
dencies which,  for  lack  of  a  more  scientific  account  of  their 
origin,  we  are  often  compelled  to  refer  to  as  the  "  Spirit  of  the 
Age."  If,  however,  one  accepts  the  most  general  and  unpreju- 
diced estimate,  and  especially  if  one  consults  the  opinions  of 
the  most  thoughtful  and  pure-minded,  one  finds  a  substantial 
uniformity  of  view  as  to  the  leading  characteristics  of  the 
proper  life  for  man.  Courage,  constancy,  justice,  wisdom, 
kindness,  generosity, — these  and  other  allied  forms  of  the 
behavior  of  the  manlier  man,  of  the  better  Self,  have  always 
been  esteemed  to  be  ethically  preferable  to  the  opposite  forms 
of  behavior;  they  have  always  been  accounted  among  the 
fundamental  virtues.  In  a  word :  the  one  persistent  utterance 
of  moral  instruction  has  been,  "  Yet  show  I  unto  you  a  more 
excellent  way  ;  "  and,  in  the  various  forms  of  energizing  which 
necessarily  belong  to  every  individual  man  in  his  social  rela- 
tions to  other  men,  the  different  distinguishable  virtues  are  the 
different  allied  forms  of  following  this  "  more  excellent  way." 
The  relation  of  a  preliminary  classification  of  the  virtues  to 
the  ends  aimed  at  by  a  philosophy  of  conduct  may,  therefore, 
be  described  in  the  following  way.  We  wish  to  discover  the 
essential  characteristics  of  the  Virtuous  Life  ;  —  and  this  both 
with  a  view  to  understand  such  a  life  and  also  to  acquaint 
ourselves  with  the  proper  way  to  lead  it.  For  the  philosophy 
of  conduct,  although  it  deals  so  largely  with  a  theory  of  values 
that  are  rather  obscurely  and  changefully  incorporated  into 
an  experience  of  facts,  has  its  own  supreme  value  as  the  trust- 
worthy guide  to  actual  right  conduct.  Ethics,  considered  as 
the  scientific  study  of  conduct,  must  introduce  its  student  to 
the  art  of  living  virtuously.  All  the  human  estimates  of 
virtue  depend  upon  an  experience  involving  ideas  of  value ; 
and  these  values  are  all  realizable  only  in  the  life  of  the 


216  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

better,  the  Ideal  Self.  But  ethics  is,  of  course,  not  satisfied 
to  leave  the  current  conceptions  of  the  different  virtues  and 
duties  so  indefinite  in  number  and  so  disconnected  in  prin- 
ciple. It  aims  to  reduce  them  to  allied  species,  to  distinguish 
the  more  fundamental  and  inclusive,  and,  if  possible,  to  bring 
them  all  under  some  one  principle  or  idea.  In  its  effort  to 
accomplish  this  it  must  avail  itself  of  the  scientific  method  of 
classification  and  of  reflective  criticism  with  a  view  to  unify 
its  results. 

Perhaps  the  most  common  mistake  made  by  writers  on 
ethics  is  to  force  a  unification  by  exalting  some  one  virtue  or 
some  one  aspect  of  the  virtuous  life  to  a  position  of  exclusive 
supremacy.  But  such  a  method  inevitably  results  in  several 
theoretical  and  practical  evils  :  (1)  The  misinterpretation  of 
the  terms  used  by  men  generally  to  express  the  different 
virtues  ;  (2)  a  narrowing  of  the  conception  of  the  morally 
most  worthy  manhood,  either  by  leaving  out  of  it  certain 
virtuous  traits,  or  by  underestimating  the  value  of  certain 
aspects  of  the  ideal  of  manliness ;  (3)  a  loss  of  roundness  and 
harmony  to  the  idea  of  the  good  man,  which  results  from 
making  him  "  over-good  "  on  some  sides  ("  too  good  for  this 
world,"  as  the  somewhat  misleading,  yet  expressive  popular 
phrase  would  say)  ;  and  (4)  an  excessive  abstractness, — the 
completion  of  the  task  of  describing  the  total  Virtuous  Life 
in  terms  that  cannot  be  translated  into  the  concrete  linea- 
ments and  full-blooded  structure  of  a  living  organism. 

I  would  not  have  it  forgotten  then,  that  the  truly  virtuous 
life  is  the  life  of  the  whole  man,  body  and  soul,  with  all  his 
appetites,  passions,  desires,  and  affections,  involving  all  his 
capacities  and  constitutional  or  acquired  forms  of  activity  — 
the  total  human  being,  feeling,  intellect,  and  will. 

How,  more  precisely,  shall  one  describe  the  virtuous,  the 
morally  good  man ;  —  the  man  who  performs  all  his  duties, 
and  possesses  and  exercises  all  the  virtues?  Shall  one  be 
satisfied  to  say  :  He  is  the  man  who  does  now  this,  now  that; 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  THE  VIRTUES  217 

and  who  refrains  from  doing  this  on  such  an  occasion,  and  on 
another  occasion  from  doing  that  ?  Or  may  one  affirm :  He 
is  the  man  who  is  courageous,  constant,  just,  wise,  kind,  and 
generous ;  and  who  practises  whatever  other  ways  of  conduct- 
ing himself  are  to  be  recognized  as  virtuous  by  the  social 
judgment  of  his  fellow-men  ?  ^  Or  can  one  make  a  more 
general  summary  and  rest  satisfied  with  this :  He  is  the  bene- 
volent man,  the  man  of  good  will  ?  On  the  answer  which 
is  given  to  these  questions  must  depend  in  large  measure  the 
subsequent  answer  to  the  more  speculative  inquiry  after  the 
nature  of  the  Right  and  the  relation  in  which  the  human 
Moral  Self  and  the  social  order  of  humanity  stand  to  the 
order  of  the  Universe  and  to  the  so-called  "  World-Ground." 

In  almost  all  attempts  at  stricter  classification,  in  accord- 
ance with  recognized  scientific  methods,  the  selection  of  a 
satisfactory  principle  of  classification  is  a  difficult  task.  In 
the  scientific  treatment  of  complex  psychical  phenomena,  or 
of  attitudes  and  aspects  of  the  entire  man  as  related  to  life 
and  to  reality,  it  is  particularly  difficult  to  find  such  a  helpful 
principle.  But  when  it  is  proposed  to  reduce  to  scientific 
ordering  the  voluntary  adoption  of  ideas  of  value,  in  order  to 

1  The  following  list  of  virtues  was  written  out  at  my  request  on  consultation  by- 
two  persons  who  are  intelligent  about  matters  of  current  morality  and  yet  with- 
out technical  knowledge  of  psychological  ethics :  —  "  Temperance,  patience, 
cleanliness,  kindliness,  good  temper,  unselfishness,  thoughtfulness,  justness, 
truthfulness,  courage  (moral  and  physical),  righteousness,  piety,  uprightness, 
forgiveness,  purity,  orderliness,  sobriety,  industry,  perseverance,  faithfulness, 
love  to  neighbor,  honesty,  chastity,  adaptability  (?),  cheerfulness,  prudence,  self- 
control,  charity,  hopefulness."  The  redundancy  from  one  point  of  view  and 
deficiency  from  another  point  of  view,  the  lack  of  coordination,  the  comparative 
narrowness  of  some  of  these  so-called  virtues  and  the  vast  range  over  the  "  springs 
of  action "  which  belongs  to  others  of  every  such  popular  list  are  at  once 
apparent  to  the  trained  student  of  psychology.  But  these  same  qualifications 
belong  also  to  most  of  the  lists  which  have  been  adopted  by  writers  on  the  prin- 
ciples of  morality.  Even  in  the  case  of  Martineau's  careful  and  elaborate  analysis 
of  the  "  springs  of  action  "  with  a  view  to  a  critical  "  Idiopsychological  Ethics  " 
(Part  II,  Book  i.  of  the  "Types  of  Ethical  Theory"),  it  is  difficult  to  make 
sure  of  agreement  with  the  author,  both  as  to  the  completeness  of  his  analysis  and 
also  as  respects  the  relation  in  which  these  primary  and  secondary  springs  of 
action  stand  to  the  different  virtues  and  vices. 


218  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

place  these  ideas  in  control  over  all  the  varied  and  shifting 
springs  of  action,  under  every  variety  of  the  physical  and 
social  environment  to  which  man's  evolution  is  subject,  then 
the  selection  of  a  principle  of  classification  is  supremely 
difficult.  Here  the  principle  is  necessarily  defined  by  the 
nature  of  man  himself  —  his  total  nature,  including  all  the 
ends  of  Good  he  seeks  —  in  his  physical,  mental,  and  social 
development.  The  operative  principle,  in  actuality,  is  the 
unity  in  variety  of  a  Moral  Self,  freely  adjusting  itself  to  the 
changing  relations  which  it  sustains,  as  a  member  of  a 
society  of  moral  selves. 

Divisions  of  the  virtues  like  that,  for  example,  of  M.  Janet,^ 
into  '''devoirs  stricts^^  and  '' devoirs  larges^^  need  not  occupy 
our  attention ;  for  they  can  only  serve  the  temporary  purpose 
of  introducing  dispute  over  certain  subordinate  problems  in 
applied  ethics.  And  these  problems,  so  far  as  I  intend  to 
treat  of  them  at  all,  will  more  fitly  come  up  in  other  con- 
nections. 

The  classification  into  self-regard ing  virtues  and  social 
virtues  is  more  worthy  of  consideration.  This  division  is  not 
infrequently,  and  always  with  a  certain  plausibility,  employed 
to  show  how  virtue  can  be  evolved  from  that  which  is  non- 
virtuous,  or  even  vicious  ;  how  the  morally  good  can  come  out 
of  the  ethically  neutral,  if  not  the  ethically  evil.  It  is  a  divi- 
sion of  the  virtues  which  is  based  upon  the  relations  sustained 
between  the  motives  for  conduct  and  certain  clearly  conceived 
personal  interests  which  are  chosen  as  ends.  The  motive  for 
some  of  the  virtues  is  the  end  of  good  for  myself ;  the  motive 
for  others  of  the  virtues  is  the  end  of  good,  for  others.  I  have 
myself  to  look  out  for,  —  my  own  life,  health,  and  happiness 
to  secure ;  my  own  appetites,  instincts,  passions,  and  desires 
are  in  part  self-regarding  "  springs  of  action."  To  conserve 
these  self-regarding  interests  intelligently  is  right;  and  the 
different  ways  of  doing  this  constitute,  when  they  are  volun- 

1  La  Morale,  liv.  II.  chap.  iii. 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  THE  VIRTUES  219 

tary  and  habitual,  the  different  so-called  self-regarding  virtues. 
But  I  have  also  a  certain  part  in  society  to  play,  —  in  the 
family,  the  tribe,  the  clan,  the  circle  of  comrades  and  friends 
with  their  opponents  and  enemies,  if  not  in  tlie  larger  com- 
munity of  the  state,  the  nation,  or  the  whole  world  of  men. 
And  I  am  constituted  a  social  being,  with  appetites,  instincts, 
passions,  desires,  and  affections  of  a  social  kind.  These  latter, 
when  voluntarily  and  habitually  made  reasonable  and  intelli- 
gent, become  the  social  virtues.  The  two  classes  of  virtues, 
when  both  are  faithfully  practised,  fill  up  the  whole  orb  of  the 
virtuous  man's  life  ;  he  who  has  them  both  in  full  measure 
is  the  ideally  good  person. 

Now  it  cannot  be  denied  that  some  of  the  many  so-called 
springs  of  action  do  have  a  more  direct  and  forceful  influence 
upon  the  conduct  of  the  individual  as  related  to  the  interests 
of  the  individual  self.  Cleanliness,  temperance,  purity,  in- 
dustry, and  prudence,  as  well  as  fortitude  in  resistance  to  all 
hostile  attacks  upon  the  immediate  interests  of  one's  own 
bodily  and  mental  life,  are  excellent  forms  of  behavior,  neces- 
sary habits  for  him  who  would  lead  the  ideally  good  human 
life.  And  so  are  kindliness,  honesty,  justice,  pity,  chastity, 
—  words  which  have  no  meaning  except  on  the  supposition 
that  the  individual  man  is  acting  in  social  relations  with 
others,  and  is  shaping  his  conduct  with  their  interests  as  well 
as  his  own  in  view.  Moreover,  both  from  the  theoretical  and 
from  the  practical  points  of  view,  he  who  has  no  regard  for 
the  cultivation  of  the  excellences  of  the  ideal  Self  in  the  con- 
crete case  of  his  own  individual  life  —  that  which  is  nearest 
to  him  and  most  immediately,  in  all  ordinary  cases,  under  his 
control  —  cannot  be  an  efficient  doer  of  the  socially  right 
things ;  and  to  turn  the  statement  about,  he  who  disregards 
the  practice  of  the  so-called  social  virtues  thereby  shows  a 
woful  disregard  of  his  own  higher  and  more  worthy  Self. 

It  might  be  objected  to  this  classification  (so  Sidgwick)  that 
it  involves  a  premature  and  illogical  denial  of  all  the  claims 


220  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

of  every  form  of  intuitionism ;  or,  more  forcefully,  that  it 
takes  the  spontaneity  of  ethical  feeling,  as  well  as  the  value 
of  disposition  and  of  habits  of  conduct,  out  of  the  sphere  of 
ethics  altogether.  But  there  are  objections  to  urge  which  are 
much  more  comprehensive  and  conclusive.  They  arise  when- 
ever one  considers  those  psychological  conditions  on  which, 
and  those  psychological  principles  according  to  which,  the 
very  conception  of  a  Self  lias  its  origin  and  development ;  and 
they  are  greatly  reinforced  whenever  one  reflects  upon  the 
philosophical  implications  which  the  distinction  itself  is  de- 
signed to  support.  Especially  emphatic  are  these  objections 
to  this  distinction  between  the  self-regarding  and  the  social 
virtues  when  it  is  applied  to  the  nature  and  the  qualifications 
of  man's-  moral  life. 

For,  in  the  first  place,  it  is  chiefly  as  the  distinction  between 
one's  self  and  others  is  made,  only  to  be  disregarded  and  broken 
down,  that  tlie  moral  life  of  the  human  being  enters  upon  its 
course  of  development.  The  very  birth,  so  to  say,  of  the  moral 
Self,  involves  in  some  sort  the  voluntary  abrogation  of  this 
distinction.  In  saying  this,  I  do  not  intend  to  revive  in  new 
form  an  obsolete  Hegelian  abstraction;  I  intend  simply  to 
point  out  the  obvious  meaning  of  the  most  primary  and  crude 
but  constant  and  significant  facts  of  human  ethical  experience. 
The  human  being,  as  soon  as  conscious  of  a  social  environ- 
ment, spontaneously  expresses  all  those  springs  of  action 
which  lead  him  both  to  seek  from  others  for  himself  a  variety 
of  goods  and  to  seek  to  give  to  others  a  variety  of  things 
which  he  finds  to  be  good  for  himself.  His  self-regarding 
appetites,  passions,  desires,  and  affections,  are  shot  through 
with  sympathetic  and  other-regarding  or  social  impulses  ;  and 
the  society  of  which  he  comes  to  recognize  himself  as  a 
member,  is  an  integral  part  of  the  conception  which  he  comes 
to  hold  of  himself  as  an  individual  to  the  securing  of  whose 
interests  others  as  well  as  himself  must  pay  regard.  From 
the  very  inception  of  the  moral  life,  and  as  a  necessary  incite- 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  THE  VIRTUES  221 

ment  to  the  beginnings  of  such  a  life,  the  individual  Self  is 
the  self-conscious  Will  seeking  its  own  good,  as  one  of  many 
similar  selves. 

Thus,  as  I  have  already  shown  (p.  73  f.)  the  sentiment 
of  obligation  is  ordinarily  first  aroused  when  the  purely 
self-regarding  volition  receives  its  check  from  the  social 
environment.  The  beginning  lesson  in  right  conduct  is 
this:  "Thou  shalt  not  regard  thyself  to  the  exclusion  of 
regard  for  others ;  thou  shalt  regard  thyself  only  as  society 
permits  thee  to  regard  thyself.  And,  willing  or  nilling, 
thou  shalt  conform  in  thy  self-regarding,  to  the  customs,  the 
traditional  and  organized  will  of  thy  predecessors  and  supe- 
riors." Even  in  the  gratification  of  the  most  fundamental 
and  imperative  of  the  appetites  and  passions,  virtuous  con- 
duct imperatively  requires  that  the  regard  shall  not  be,  at 
least  directly  and  ostensibly,  directed  upon  the  self.  In  no  soci- 
ety, however  low,  can  the  individual  eat  and  drink  and  indulge 
the  appetite  of  sex,  with  even  a  show  of  virtue,  and  regard 
only  himself.  And  that  which  is  enforced  in  the  lower  grades 
of  moral  evolution  by  some  form  of  appeal  to  civil,  military, 
or  religious  authority,  is  freely  adopted  as  tlie  rational  prin- 
ciple of  conduct  by  those  who  have  reached  the  higher  grades 
of  moral  evolution.  The  essential  thing  about  their  morality 
is  that,  whether  they  eat  or  drink  or  whatsoever  they  do,  they 
do  it  all  —  if  not  "to  the  glory  of  God  "  — with  the  good  of 
society  in  mind  as  a  matter  of  the  virtuous  man's  constant 
regard. 

While,  then,  the  distinction  between  one's  self  and  others, 
as  a  matter  of  self-conscious  thinking,  grows  more  and  more 
clear  with  the  growth  of  the  individual's  capacities,  this  dis- 
tinction is  from  the  first  totally  unfitted  to  be  made  the  basis 
for  a  classification  of  the  virtues.  The  more  of  selfhood  any 
individual  attains,  the  more  does  he  become  both  able  and 
entitled  to  distinguish  himself,  as  having  the  unity  of  a  per- 
sonality, from  all  his  own  physical  and  social  environment. 


222  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

But  the  growth  in  the  ability  to  make  this  distinction  cannot 
result  in  the  development  of  a  Moral  Self,  cannot  even  pro- 
duce the  first  feeble  beginnings  of  a  life  in  which  right  and 
wrong  conduct  are  distinguished,  unless  some  sort  of  an 
attempt  at  harmony  between  the  so-called  self-regarding  and 
the  so-called  social  springs  of  action  is  brought  about. 
The  man  who  refuses  to  attempt  this  harmony,  the  purely 
self-regarding  man,  is  the  non-virtuous  or  bad  man.  His 
self-regarding  excellences,  in  so  far  as  they  are  purely  8elf- 
regarding,  are  not  esteemed  virtuous  at  all.  Even  a  king 
must  do  as  kings  ought  to  do  —  most  of  all,  when  he  is 
regarding  his  own  kingly  dignity  and  power.  The  gods  of 
Homer  might  be  adulterous  without  blame ;  but  if  they  were 
sneaking  and  cowardly  in  their  gratification  of  selfish  lusts, 
they  did  not  behave  as  gods  should.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
at  no  time,  whether  in  the  naive  and  childish  ethics  of  the 
Homeric  Age,  or  in  that  most  strenuous  insistence  upon  re- 
gard for  the  social  welfare  which  characterizes  modern  ethical 
theories,  do  we  find  men  satisfied  with  the  morality  of  the  per- 
son who  attempts  to  practise  only  the  so-called  social  virtues. 
In  all  our  historical  characterization  of  the  Virtuous  Life,  the 
point  now  to  be  noticed  is  this :  virtuous  conduct  cannot  be 
merely  self-regarding ;  it  is,  of  its  very  nature  and  essence, 
an  activity  of  the  Moral  Self  in  social  relations  ;  but  then  it  is 
also  something  which  belongs  most  distinctly  and  essentially 
to  a  self-respecting  and  self-controlled  manhood. 

In  the  second  place,  it  may  be  objected  to  the  distinction  of 
the  virtues  into  the  self-regarding  and  the  social,  that  most 
forms  of  virtuous  conduct,  so  far  as  they  are  practised  with 
an  intelligent  consideration  of  ends  in  view,  are  hoth  self- 
regarding  and  social.  For  example,  shall  the  man  who,  be- 
cause he  has  respect  for  his  own  personality  and  its  attitude 
of  fidelity  toward  the  truth  as  he  understands  it,  refuses 
to  lie,  even  when  he  is  forced  to  believe  that  a  lie  might 
be  useful  in  conserving  the  interests  of  society,  be  denied  all 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  THE  VIRTUES  223 

claim  to  virtue  on  the  ground  that  his  conduct  is  motived  by 
selfishness  ?  Or  shall  the  man  who,  with  equal  courage  and 
consistency,  always  refrains  from  falsehood  in  the  interests  of 
social  morals,  be  esteemed  lacking  in  the  essentials  of  a  proper 
regard  for  his  own  personality  ?  I  do  not  believe  that  the  vir- 
tuousness  of  truthfulness  is  destroyed  or  necessarily  impaired 
by  the  acceptance  of  either  point  of  view  as  its  motive.  Lying 
is  bad  for  society,  —  a  social  injury,  a  social  vice.  Lying  is 
degrading  to  one's  proper  self-regard,  —  an  act  unworthy  and 
deeply  injurious  to  the  character  of  a  moral  personality.  And 
they  are  virtuous  men,  in  this  regard,  who  will  not  lie,  whether 
their  motive  be  regard  for  themselves  or  regard  for  society. 
The  same  line  of  remark  is  applicable  to  those  who  virtuously 
refrain  from  that  vice  which  is  specifically  called  "  social." 

That  should  be  noted  in  passing,  however,  which  will  be 
made  more  obvious  subsequently.  The  harmony  at  which 
all  virtuous  conduct  aims  may  be  expressed,  not  simply  as  an 
adjustment  of  the  individual  self  to  society,  but  as  an  adjust- 
ment  which  goes  on  within  the  individual  self.  In  the  virtu- 
ous conduct,  for  the  moment,  at  least,  the  whole  being  is 
brought  into  a  harmony  between  the  lower  and  actual  self  and 
the  higher  but  ideal  Self ;  and  in  this  fact  I  find  a  suggestion 
of  the  ultimate  Ideal  of  ethics. 

Another  classification  of  the  virtues  which  may  receive 
a  brief  notice,  adopts  as  its  principle  the  difference  of  objects 
upon  which  the  virtuous  conduct  terminates.  In  the  division 
resulting,  some  three  or  four  classes  of  virtues  and  corre- 
sponding duties  are  customarily  enumerated.  Thus,  there 
may  be  recognized  virtues  that  are  (a)  individual,  (b)  domestic, 
(c)  social ;  and  duties  toward  (a)  Self,  (b)  the  family,  and 
(c)  society ;  or  again,  four  classes  of  duties  and  their  corre- 
sponding virtues,  —  namely,  toward  (1)  animals,  (2)  Self, 
(3)  fellow-men,  and  (4)  God. 

But  all  proposals  to  discover  the  essential  characteristics 
of  the  Virtuous  Life  by  classifying  the  virtues  according  to 


224  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

the  different  objects  on  which  the  virtuous  conduct  termi- 
nates land  us  in  hopeless  confusion.  Of  the  above-mentioned 
threefold  division  one  may  inquire,  whether  marriage  is  for 
all  persons  a  necessary  condition  of  living  virtuously ;  and 
what  particular  form  of  it  can  be  made,  under  all  social  con- 
ditions, so  comprehensive  as  to  include  a  full  one-third  of  all 
human  duties.  In  what  essential  respect  do  certain  virtues, 
—  such  as  pity,  kindness,  justice,  truthfulness,  etc.,  —  when 
exercised  in  the  domestic  circle,  differ  from  the  same  virtues 
when  they  pass  over  into  the  class  called  social  ?  As  to  the 
preceding  fourfold  classification,  it  may  be  questioned  whether 
there  are,  strictly  speaking,  any  duties  and  virtues  having 
respect  to  the  animals  that  are  not  included  in  those  having 
respect  to  self  and  to  fellow-men.  And  there  can  be  no 
doubt  whatever  that  the  instant  the  existence  of  God  is  as- 
sumed as  necessarily  connected  with  the  philosophical  treat- 
ment of  ethical  phenomena,  the  entire  subject  of  morality 
changes  front.  All  duties  now  become  due  to  God ;  all  vir- 
tues now  become  capable  of  being  regarded  as  fidelity  to  Him, 
as  a  voluntary  patterning  of  the  individual  man  after  the 
Divine  model  and  as  "  moments "  in  the  life  which  is  obedi- 
ence to  his  Holy  Will. 

A  third  principle  for  a  classification  of  the  virtues  lays 
emphasis  upon  the  attitude  in  which  the  different  impulses  of 
human  nature  stand  toward  the  Moral  Ideal.  This  is  at  once 
the  oldest  and  the  most  suggestive  and  convenient ;  it  is  also 
a  principle  which,  when  modified  in  accordance  with  the 
progress  of  psychological  science,  most  directly  and  safely 
introduces  us  to  a  valid  theory  as  to  the  nature  of  virtue.  Its 
foundation  rests  in  the  belief  that  human  virtues  are  those 
activities  of  the  human  Self  which  correspond  to  the  Ideal  of 
a  Self.    "  A  man's  duties  are  due  to  his  humanity." 

By  making  this  division,  Plato,  in  spite  of  the  uncouth 
physiology  and  psycho-physics  which  were  then  its  accompa- 
niment, showed  a  profound  insight  into  the  essential  nature  of 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  THE  VIRTUES  225 

the  Virtuous  Life  among  men.  Three  cardinal  virtues  there 
were ;  and  yet  a  fourth  which  comprehended  the  three  in  a 
sort  of  divinely  ordered  harmony.  The  three  were  Wisdom 
or  the  virtue  of  the  head  (cro^ia),  Courage  or  the  virtue  of  the 
heart  (avSpeia),  and  Self-control  or  the  virtue  of  the  parts 
below  the  diaphragm  (aoxppocnjvrj).  A  certain  Justness,  or 
right  proportionateness  (Bi/caLoavvrj)  everywhere  resulted  when 
these  three  virtues  combined  to  make  the  really  "  good  man." 
And  yet  in  some  sort  it  is  wisdom,  or  reason  knowing  the 
Reality,  and  so  regulating  the  entire  life,  which,  according  to 
Plato,  supremely  characterizes  the  follower  of  the  moral  Ideal. 
But  none  of  these  virtues  can  be  merely  self-regarding,  although 
they  are  all  attitudes  of  the  higher  Self  with  regard  to  its  own 
proper  regulation.  For  with  Plato,  as  with  the  ancient  world 
generally,  wisdom,  courage,  temperance,  and  justice  are  essen- 
tially civic  virtues,  and  have  regard  to  the  welfare  of  the  State. 
This  ideal  of  manhood  is,  then,  the  farthest  possible  from  the 
brutal  self-assertion  of  some  of  the  modern  advocates  of  the 
so-called  "  strenuous  life."  As  Paulsen  has  well  said  :  ^  "  The 
Republic  is  the  very  thing  for  young  people  whose  thoughts  are 
preoccupied  with  and  confused  by  Nietzsche's  UebermenschJ^ 

Plato's  great  disciple,  while  not  adhering  to  any  consistent 
classification  of  the  virtues,  in  his  treatment  of  the  nature  of 
virtue  in  general  and  of  the  particular  virtues  accepts  essen- 
tially the  same  principle.  In  his  preliminary  definition  of  the 
sphere  of  ethics  Aristotle  indeed  proposes  the  distinction 
which,  we  have  already  seen  (p.  106  f.),  weakens,  if  it  does  not 
vitiate,  one's  estimate  of  the  nature  and  supreme  value  of  the 
virtuous  life.  The  virtues  of  the  head,  the  voluntary  culture 
and  right  use  of  reason  as  a  species  of  conduct,  although  it  is  a 
fundamental  prerequisite  of  every  cardinal  virtue,  he  separates 
at  the  beginning  of  his  treatise  from  the  so-called  "  moral " 
virtues.  Still  "  the  virtue  or  excellence  that  we  are  to  con- 
sider is,"  according  to  Aristotle,  "  the  excellence  of  man," 

1  A  System  of  Ethics,  p.  47. 
15 


226  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

and  bj  the  "  excellence  of  man  "  is  meant  "  excellence  not  of 
body,  but  of  soul."  And  in  his  description  of  each  particular 
virtue  he  finds  himself  dealing  with  the  various  springs  of 
action  and  forms  of  activity,  under  the  control  of  the  will  and 
in  the  pursuit  of  an  ideal.  Thus  the  various  appetites  give 
rise  either  to  forms  of  temperance  or  to  the  vices  of  gluttony, 
unchastity,  etc. ;  and  fear  either  begets  an  unworthy  cowardice, 
or,  being  controlled,  issues  in  a  prudent  courage  or  an  impru- 
dent rashness.  In  all  this  discussion  it  is  evident  that  the 
author  of  the  Nicomachean  Ethics  has  constantly  in  view  the 
fundamental  principle  of  every  psychologically  sound  theory 
of  the  nature  of  virtue. 

Abundant  examples  might  be  drawn  from  the  history  of 
ethical  discussions  to  show  that  every  attempt  at  a  description 
of  the  Virtuous  Life  must  pay  its  respects  to  essentially  the 
same  principle  for  the  classification  of  the  virtues.  And  why 
should  it  not,  as  a  matter  of  course,  be  so  ?  For  by  the  word, 
the  "  virtues,"  ethics  does  not  mean  to  indicate  some  en- 
tity that  can  be  abstracted  and  exhibited  apart  from  the 
activity  of  the  entire  soul.  Yirtuousness  for  man  is  essen- 
tially man's  Self  in  action  as  related  to  other  selves. 

With  a  view,  then,  the  more  conveniently  to  establish  a  valid 
theory  of  the  nature  of  virtue  upon  a  broad  basis  of  human 
experience,  I  shall  classify  the  virtues  according  to  the  current 
threefold  classification  of  man's  so-called  faculties.  We 
have  thus  to  consider  in  a  separate  chapter,  first,  the  virtues 
of  the  will,  or  those  forms  of  conduct  in  which  the  excellent, 
the  better  manhood  shows  itself  conspicuously  by  its  self- 
control,  whether  in  the  pursuit  of  its  chosen  ends  or  in  re- 
sistance to  those  influences  which  inhibit  and  prevent  the 
execution  of  the  will.  Second  :  we  have  to  examine  the 
virtues  of  the  intellect  or  judgment,  those  excellences  of 
the  better  manhood  which  give  the  distinctively  rational 
quality  to  human  conduct.  And,  third,  there  remain  the 
virtuous  sentiments  and  affections,  the  virtues  of  the  heart, 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  THE  VIRTUES  227 

or  those  excellences  of  conduct  which  do  most  sweeten  the 
sourness,  illumine  the  darkness,  and  cheer  the  otherwise 
hard  and  cold  path  to  the  higher  Good  of  human  life. 

But  before  taking  up  in  detail  this  discussion  of  the  Vir- 
tuous Life  certain  explanations  are  necessary  as  to  the  use 
which  it  is  proposed  to  make  of  this  principle  of  classification. 

First :  no  form  of  virtuous  conduct  can  either  be  under- 
stood or  practised  as  though  it  were  the  product  of  any  isolated 
activity  of  man's  mental  life.  Strictly  speaking,  then,  there 
are  no  virtues  exclusively  of  either  head  or  heart  or  dia- 
phragm, or  even  of  either  intellect,  feeling,  or  will.  For 
blind,  unfeeling  volition  —  if  it  were  worthy  to  be  called  a 
man^s  will  —  has  no  ethical  quality  whatever;  such  volition  is 
not  a  function  of  the  Moral  Self.  In  order  to  constitute  any 
fact  of  volition  a  deed  of  will  that  has  ethically  good  or  bad 
quality,  there  must  be  a  presentation  of  some  form  of  good 
to  be  obtained  and  a  feeling  appreciative  of  its  worth  as  an 
end  to  be  voluntarily  sought.  But  neither  does  mere  judg- 
ment as  to  what  is  eudasmonistically  or  aesthetically  or  ethic- 
ally good,  however  true  and  illumining  in  itself,  constitute  a 
virtuous  action.  Just  judgment  is  a  virtuous  trait,  and  to  be 
trained  in  such  judgment  is  an  essential  for  the  truly  good 
man.  They  who  have  in  the  highest  perfection  this  power  of 
intelligently  balancing  conflicting  interests,  of  sitting  like 
gods  for  the  evaluation  of  the  moral  worth  of  themselves 
and  others,  belong  to  the  "  good  few "  among  men.  But 
such  power  of  judgment  is  always  attained  and  exercised 
as  the  result  of  will,  incited  and  suffused  with  feeling.  It, 
too,  is  a  function  of  the  total  Moral  Self.  Nor  is  mere  so- 
called  "  fine  feeling  "  a  virtue,  unless  it  be  tempered  with 
reason  and  then  adopted  as  a  guide  to  action. 

The  threefold  classification  of  the  virtues  which  I  propose 
must  therefore,  like  every  other  classification,  be  understood 
as  not  denying  the  unity,  either  of  the  soul  or  of  the  soul's 
virtuous  living,  while  at  the  same  time  adopting  distinctions 


228  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

that  are  serviceable  for  the  mastery  of  an  almost  indefinite 
variability. 

For,  second,  there  are  different  classes  of  virtues  which  do, 
both  actually  and  in  the  average  estimate  of  mankind,  em- 
phasize the  excellences  of  man's  self-control ;  and  the  cor- 
responding vices  are  like  laments  over  deficiencies  in  the 
power  of  self-control.  The  courageous  and  consistent  "  bad  " 
man  illustrates  the  one  ;  and  the  timid  and  fickle  but  "  well- 
meaning"  man  illustrates  the  other.  So,  too,  there  are 
virtues  which  depend  chiefly  upon  a  cultivated  judgment; 
they  are  the  virtues  of  rationality,  in  the  narrow  but  popular 
meaning  of  the  latter  word.  And  no  kindness  of  heart,  or 
constancy  of  purpose,  can  suffice  to  fill  the  gap  caused  by  a 
lack  of  these  virtues.  Virtues  indeed  they  are  ;  for  they  re- 
sult from  the  at  least  partially  right  activity  of  the  moral  self 
in  accordance  with  its  proper  and  obligatory  ideal.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  man  of  steadfast  and  courageous  purpose,  with 
no  end  of  wisdom  and  the  most  exact  justice,  but  without  kind- 
ness of  heart,  sympathy  with  the  weak,  and  pity  for  the 
oppressed  and  the  fallen,  is  not  the  ideally  good  man.  He 
lacks  one  essential  third,  at  least,  of  the  wholly  Virtuous 
Life. 

And,  now  in  the  third  place,  the  two  preceding  remarks 
must  combine  in  a  conclusion,  to  make  and  apply  which  will 
relieve  the  mind  of  many  practical  perplexities,  while,  at  the 
same  time,  throwing  no  small  light  upon  the  true  conception 
of  the  essential  nature  of  virtue.  Is  the  courage  of  the 
criminal  who  is  brave  not  wholly  from  a  spirit  of  shameless 
bravado,  but  chiefly  because  of  a  sort  of  shame  at  betraying 
fear  when  he  must  face  the  foreseen  consequences  of  his  own 
chosen  path  of  conduct,  a  virtue,  or  not  ?  Is  our  admiration 
for  Milton's  Satan,  however  sneakingly  confessed,  a  purely 
aesthetical  and  not  also  an  ethical  affair  ?  Can  the  mind  of 
man  frame  a  picture  of  a  devil,  who  is  in  any  sense  of  the  word 
and  over  any  realm,  the  Devil,  and  make  him  wholly  bad  ? 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  THE  VIRTUES  229 

To  all  such  questions  the  naive  moral  consciousness  of  man- 
kind gives  no  unequivocal  answer.  I  believe  that  the  answer  of 
the  student  of  philosophy  must  in  the  main  accord  with  the 
answer  of  mankind.^ 

Courage  and  persistency  of  purpose,  for  example,  are  virtu- 
ous forms  of  conduct.  They  are  forms  of  conduct,  because 
they  involve  the  activity  of  the  whole  Moral  Self,  —  feeling, 
intellect,  and  will ;  they  are  virtuous,  because  they  are  such 
forms  of  conduct,  chiefly  a  matter  of  steadfast  will,  as  corre- 
spond with  the  Ideal  of  Selfhood.  The  self-control  of  fear, 
and  steadfastness  of  purpose,  even  when  given  to  the  pursuit 
of  some  selfish  end,  do  not  thus  become  vices,  being  them- 
selves vitiated  by  the  quality  of  the  end  sought,  or  by  the 
means  employed.  They  remain  what  they  essentially  are, — 
virtues  of  the  will.  But  the  choice  of  the  inferior  in  prefer- 
ence to  the  better  good  is  a  most  cardinal  vice,  the  very 
essence,  as  it  were,  of  all  wrong-doing;  and  injustice  to 
others  in  the  pursuit  of  one's  own  ends,  whether  ignorant 
and  thoughtless  or  designed  and  deliberate,  is  a  flagrant 
moral  evil.  Selfishness  and  injustice  are  vices ;  but  courage 
and  constancy  still  remain  virtues,  even  when  enlisted  in  the 
behalf  of  selfishness  and  injustice. 

It  is  this  truth  which  gives  ethical  justification  to  the 
poetical  expression  of  it  in  Browning:  — 

"  Oh,  a  crime  will  do 
As  well,  I  reply,  to  serve  for  a  test 
As  a  virtue  golden  through  and  through. 

The  sin  I  impute  to  each  frustrate  ghost 
Is  —  the  unlit  lamp  and  the  ungirt  loin." 

Shall  it  then  be  said  that  it  were  better  —  more  in  accord- 
ance with  the  ideal  of  moral  selfhood  —  to  remain  to  the  last 
courageously  and  constantly  in  the  pursuit  of  the  inferior 
good,  rather  than  to  change  to  the  pursuit  of  the  superior 

1  Compare  the  remarks  already  made  on  p.  100. 


230  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

good  ?  Certainly  not.  But  timid  and  inconstant  generosity, 
the  spirit  of  kindness  restrained  and  rendered  fickle  by  cow- 
ardice, benevolence  that  has  no  ''  valiancy  "  to  its  "  volency," 
are  sometimes  scarcely  less  clearly  "through  and  through" 
vicious  than  is  a  courageous  and  consistent  selfishness. 

The  reasons  for  this  conflict  in  points  of  view,  and  the 
correct  solution  of  the  problems  of  ethical  praxis  that  are 
concerned  in  the  conflict,  lie  deep  in  the  constitution  of  the 
human  soul.  They  are  due  to  its  actual  variety  in  unity,  its 
real  unity  in  spite  of  the  actual  variety  of  its  activities. 
Thus  all  the  particular  virtues,  or  modes  of  conduct  which 
the  moral  consciousness  of  man  approves,  may  fitly  be  called 
"  qualified  "  virtues.  In  order  to  have  moral  quality  at  all, 
or  —  what  is  the  same  thing  —  in  order  to  be  species  of  con- 
duct, they  must  involve  the  total  personality.  They  must  be 
forms  of  action  that  admit  of  voluntary  control,  and  that  are 
directed  toward  the  attainment  of  some  end  which  itself  ad- 
mits of  being  connected  with  ideas  of  worth  and  with  feelings 
of  obligation  and  of  approbation  or  disapproval.  Those  par- 
ticular activities  of  the  man  which  correspond  with  the  ideal 
of  a  Moral  Self  conducting  itself  in  a  variety  of  social  rela- 
tions with  other  selves  are  the  so-called  virtues.  But,  I  repeat, 
they  are  all  qualified  virtues.  They  all  inhibit  and  limit  or 
supplement  and  complement  each  other  in  the  totality  of  the 
complex  Virtuous  Life.  For  this  life  is  the  total  life  in  conduct 
of  that  unitary  being,  with  all  the  variety  of  its  threefold 
nature,  which  we  call  a  human  Self. 


CHAPTER  XI 

VIRTUES  OF  THE  WILL:  COURAGE,  TEMPERANCE,  ETC. 

From  time  immemorial  and  under  all  conditions  of  human 
development,  the  man  of  strong  character  has  been  quite 
generally  admired  and  commended.  Nor  can  the  admiration 
and  commendation  be  declared,  on  a  careful  analysis  of  the 
motives  and  actions  of  men  in  this  respect,  to  be  by  any 
means  lacking  in  truly  ethical  significance.  Doubtless  some 
of  this  feeling  towards  so-called  "  strength  of  character  "  is  con- 
nected with  a  sneaking  sense  of  inferiority  which  may,  on  the 
one  hand,  lead  the  weak  to  prostrate  themselves  before  the  man 
of  superior  will,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  turn  quickly  into  the 
expression  of  that  base  envy  and  hatred  which  always  greet 
those  of  the  strenuous,  whether  the  obviously  successful  or 
unsuccessful  life.  Just  as  undoubtedly  much  of  the  universal 
admiration  for  men  of  strong  character  is  quite  purely  aes- 
thetical.  The  plucky  bulldog  or  gamecock  which  puts  up  a 
brave  fight  and  holds  tenaciously  on  to  the  bitter  end,  is 
admired.  Bravos  meet  the  daring,  if  successful,  ventures 
of  the  toreador  or  the  prima  donna.  Exhibitions  of  strength, 
whether  made  by  inanimate  or  by  animate  nature,  tend  al- 
ways to  arouse  the  aesthetical  feeling  of  man.  Weakness 
may  be  pitiful  and  pardonable,  but  it  is  never,  as  weakness, 
assthetically  good.  But  I  believe  the  facts  of  moral  con- 
sciousness show  that  just  as  undoubtedly  is  the  admiration 
which  men  so  generally  bestow  upon  strength  of  character 
also  an  ethical  affair.  Strong  in  character  is  what  the  good 
man  ought  to  be ,  strength  and  constancy  of  self-determina- 


232  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

tion  in  this  universe,  where  so  many  temptations  to  cowardice 
and  fickleness  are  found  and  where  such  bulk  of  obstacles  lies 
athwart  the  path  to  the  right  form  of  living  are  virtues  which 
every  good  man  must  possess  and  cultivate.  The  approbation 
with  which  the  strong  man  is  greeted  is  the  expression  of  a 
justifiable  moral  esteem. 

And  why  should  this  not  be  so?  The  rather,  how  can 
this  possibly  fail  to  be  so  ?  For  by  the  very  term,  will, 
nothing  else  is  meant  in  this  connection  than  the  Self  re- 
garded in  its  aspect  of  control  of  itself,  of  its  own  conduct,  in 
the  pursuit  of  an  end  esteemed  to  be  good.  This  so-called 
"  Will,''  then,  is  the  very  centre  and  core  of  his  selfhood,  in 
so  far  as  man  himself  has  anything  to  determine  concerning 
what  he  shall  be  or  accomplish  by  way  of  influence  over  his 
fellow  men.  So  that,  in  some  sort,  the  most  essential  thing 
about  moral  goodness  is  the  way  in  which  the  self-control 
enters  into  the  goodness  so  as  to  make  it  strong  and  con- 
stant. For,  properly  speaking,  '•'good  will,"  in  this  most 
fundamental,  appropriate,  and  clearly  intelligible  meaning 
of  the  phrase,  is  not  synonymous  with  benevolence,  or 
wishing  the  good.  It  is,  the  rather,  good  stiff  and  sound, 
but  not  unintelligent  and  blind,  self-control. 

Inasmuch,  then,  as  it  is  good  psychology  to  hold  that  man 
is,  primarily  and  most  fundamentally  considered,  a  Will,  and 
good  ethics  to  hold  that  moral  freedom  is  an  essential  and 
integral  part  of  his  endowment  for  the  life  of  conduct,  it  is 
also  sound  philosophy  of  conduct  to  recognize  that  these  good 
qualities  of  the  willing  Self,  are  cardinal  virtues,  fundamental 
forms  of  man's  functioning  in  the  Virtuous  Life.  A  ''''good 
will  "  ^s,  first  of  all  and  always,  a  Will  that  performs  well  its 
functions  as  a  Will.  And  such  a  will  is  what  men  chiefly 
mean  whenever  they  note  with  admiration  and  commendation 
unusual  ''strength  of  character"  so-called. 

The  three  cardinal  Virtues  of  Will,  or  forms  of  self-control 
and  self-determination  which  emphasize  the  correct  function- 


VIRTUES   OF   THE   WILL  233 

ing  of  the  voluntary  Self  in  conduct,  are  Courage,  Temper- 
ance, and  Constancy.  Courage  is  self-control  in  the  presence 
of  every  form  of  temptation  to  fear ;  it  is  strength  of  purpose 
resisting  the  impulse  to  yield  to  cowardice.  Temperance 
is  self-control  in  the  presence  of  every  impulse  to  the  grati- 
fication of  the  appetites  and  desires ;  it  is  strength  of  purpose 
to  resist  the  seductions  of  the  pleasure-giving  and  pleasure- 
promising  activities.  Constancy  is  persistent  self-control  in 
spite  of  resistance  or  obstacles  to  be  overcome ;  it  is  strength 
of  purpose  resisting  all  impulses  to  turn  aside  from  the  chosen 
course  of  conduct,  from  the  repeated  if  even  laborious  use  of 
means  to  reach  the  desired  end.  The  vices  or  faults  which 
are  opposed  to  these  virtues  are  cowardice,  licentiousness  or 
profligacy,  and  fickleness  or  sloth. 

In  some  sort,  however,  Constancy  best  expresses  the  most 
essential  characteristic  of  all  the  virtues  of  this  kind,  —  con- 
stancy which  when  it  exists  in  the  interests  of  a  high  and 
noble  principle,  a  rational  end  such  as  elicits  the  finest  ethical 
sentiment,  becomes  Fidelity  to  the  Moral  Ideal.  Than  this 
word,  no  other,  not  even  the  word  "  benevolence,"  or  the 
word  "  justice,"  is  better  fitted  to  call  up  and  to  embody  the 
most  inclusive  characteristics  of  the  truly  Virtuous  Life. 

It  is  desirable  in  the  interests  of  a  tenable  theory,  as  well  as 
indispensable  in  preparation  for  tlie  successful  practice  of 
morality,  that  these  virtues  of  will  should  be  distinguished 
from  the  shams  of  virtue  with  which  they  are  most  liable  to 
be  confounded.  And  perhaps  confusion  is  easier  here  than 
with  respect  to  any  other  class  of  virtues.  Rashness,  and  the 
braggart  spirit  or  the  spirit  of  bravado,  and  insensibility  to 
fear,  are  the  shams  of  courage  —  the  vices,  which,  although 
they  have  their  own  moral  constitution,  as  it  were,  are  most 
apt  to  be  mistaken  for  the  virtue  of  courage.  Here,  for 
example,  the  application,  by  Aristotle,  to  the  case  of  this  virtue 
of  his  well  known  doctrine  of  the  mean^  does  not  quite  satis- 
1  See  Nic.  Eth.,  II,  viii,  1  f.  and  III,  vi-ix. 


234  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

factorilj  exhibit  the  exact  nature  either  of  courage  or  of  those 
vices  which  are  its  most  frequent  and  deceptive  shams.  For 
the  virtue  of  which  rashness  is  generally  the  apparent  opposite 
vice  is  prudence ;  but  this  vice  of  rashness  may  be  the  expres- 
sion of  either  one  of  several  somewhat  different  forms  of  vicious 
motive ;  or  what  seems  rashness  may  even  be  the  expression 
of  a  deliberate,  intelligent,  and  virtuous  resolve  to  throw  all 
considerations  of  the  prudential  sort  to  the  winds,  for  the  time 
being,  in  the  interests  of  some  higher  end.  In  this  latter  case 
we  do,  indeed,  hesitate  to  speak  of  the  violation  of  prudential 
considerations  as  rashness;  and  the  conduct  resulting,  how- 
ever imprudent,  certainly  cannot  unreservedly  be  called  vicious. 
It  may  amount  to  the  sublimest  kind  of  courage. 

Not  infrequently,  however,  it  is  some  form  of  fear  which 
furnishes  the  motive  to  the  pretence  of  courage  ;  and  this  is  as 
true  of  what  appears  as  an  extraordinary  willingness  to  face 
danger,  a  brilliant  bravery  amounting  to  rashness  in  the  mind 
of  the  observer,  as  of  what,  in  the  case  of  weaker  personalities 
is  usually  recognized  as  foolhardiness.  The  cowardice  which 
exists  in  the  latter  case  Aristotle  recognizes :  "  And  so  your 
foolhardy  man  is  generally  a  coward  at  bottom  ;  he  blusters  so 
long  as  he  can  do  so  safely,  but  turns  tail  when  real  danger 
comes."  But  when  one  kind  of  fear  impulsively  overcomes 
another,  the  control  of  the  weaker  by  the  stronger  impulse 
can  scarcely  be  praised  as  an  instance  of  the  virtue  of  courage. 
The  cowards  are  not  only  those  who  will  not  fight  unless 
compelled  "  in  Hector's  fashion," — 

"  Whoso  is  seen  to  skulk  and  shirk  the  fight 
Shall  nowise  save  his  carcase  from  the  dogs." 

but  also  those  who  dare  not  refuse  to  fight  simply  because  they 
fear  more  some  form  of  vilification,  or  depreciation  by  their 
fellows.  It  is  moreover  often  difficult  to  distinguish  between 
insensibility  to  pain  and  that  energy  of  will  which  overcomes 
not  only  the  fear  of  pain  but  even  the  feeling  of  pain.     To 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  WILL  235 

which,  for  example,  shall  we  attribute  the  heroic  action  of 
that  Indian  of  whom  Jameson  tells  in  his  ''  Winter  Studies 
and  Summer  Rambles  in  Canada,"  who,  when  he  was  pinned 
by  his  arm  by  a  falling  tree,  amputated  the  arm  with  his  hunt- 
ing-knife, crept  to  his  canoe,  and  rowed  himself  home  ? 

It  would  seem,  then,  that  the  virtue  of  courage  needs  a 
more  thorough  analysis  than  it  has  generally  received  in  order 
to  distinguish  it  from  those  vices  or  faults  which  sham  its 
characteristics,  and  from  those  forms  of  virtuous  conduct 
whose  external  manifestations  are  most  similar.  Courage,  I 
repeat,  then,  is  a  virtue  which  includes  all  intelligent  self- 
control  in  the  presence  of  every  kind  of  fear.  Cowardice  is 
the  yielding  to  fear,  the  allowing  of  fear  to  become  an  impul- 
sive or  a  restraining  motive  in  the  pursuit  of  any  end  attain- 
able by  one's  conduct.  The  Self  afraid,  and  the  Self  controlling 
itself  and  putting  down  or  setting  aside  the  fear,  —  these  are 
the  essential  elements  of  this  cardinal  virtue.  It  is  fitly  called 
a  virtue  of  the  will  because,  although  it  must  be  qualified  by 
rational  considerations  and  ethical  sentiments  in  order  to 
reach  its  most  worthy  estate,  it  is,  nevertheless,  eo  ipso,  a 
way  of  voluntary  functioning  which  is  a  fundamental  char- 
acteristic of  the  good  Moral  Self.  Such  a  Self  is  designed 
to  control  itself,  in  the  pursuit  of  its  ends,  in  spite  of  every 
form  of  fear. 

Man  is  a  being  made  capable  of  fears  and  so  environed 
that  he  is  constantly,  of  necessity,  subjected  to  various  forms 
of  fear.  There  are  fears  which  are  aroused  by  all  manner  of 
attacks  upon  his  physical  well-being ;  and,  as  well,  upon  the 
physical  well-being  of  those  whose  interests  are  nearest  to 
his  own.  He  cannot  acquire  any  manner  of  possessions 
without  overcoming  these  fears  ;  and  for  the  primitive  or 
savage  man  the  daily  fears  that  inhibit  and  scare  backward 
his  efforts  for  food  and  drink  and  gratification  of  the  sexual 
appetite,  are  terrible  and  hard  to  overcome.  Domestic,  tribal, 
and  civic  fears  hedge  in  and  retrench  his  forth-puttings,  the 


236  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

impulsive  or  more  deliberate  resultant  workings  of  the  different 
springs  of  action.  The  restraints  of  the  current  morals  and 
of  his  religious  beliefs  largely  multiply  and  enhance  his  fears. 
His  primary  moral  law  is  chiefly  a  "  thou  shalt  not "  ;  his 
religion  is  largely  a  matter  of  terrifying  superstitions  and 
dreadful  tabus.  Only  in  this  way,  however,  can  the  crude 
and  dangerous  primary  impulses  of  his  nature  be  held  in 
check,  and  the  most  fundamental  of  all  tlie  particular  virtues, 
the  virtue  of  courage,  be  induced.  As  ethnology  shows  us;^ 
"  Prominent  among  the  checks  of  savage  life  is  the  fear  of 
the  anger  of  the  dead.  Among  savages  the  supposed  wishes 
of  their  departed  friends,  or  deified  forefathers,  operate  as 
real  commands,  girt  with  all  the  sanction  of  superstitious 
terror,  and  clothing  the  most  fanciful  customs  with  all  the 
obligatory  feelings  of  morality." 

Now  if  we  examine  this  emotion  of  fear  in  the  light  of  its 
psycho-physics  we  find  its  most  primitive  significance  in  the 
economics  of  human  life  to  be  (1)  inhibitory  and  (2)  retro- 
active  in  the  meaning  of  furnishing  the  impulse  to  retreat, 
to  move  in  the  opposite  direction  from  that  in  which  lies  the 
desired  object.  The  scared  child,  like  the  startled  animal, 
first  stops,  stands  still,  remains  in  extreme  cases  '*  rooted  to 
the  spot"  and  trembling,  but  with  senses  alert  to  discover 
and  estimate  the  object  of  fear ;  and  then,  second,  if  the  fear 
is  yielded  to,  impulsive  or  more  deliberate  flight  results.  But 
all  human  interests,  all  the  ends  of  good  which  mortal  man 
can  pursue,  including  those  that  are  most  evanescent  or 
purely  ideal,  are  subjects  of  the  struggle  for  possession,  the 
fight  that  either  wins  or  suffers  defeat.  For  every  kind  of 
good  and  of  impulse  toward  that  good,  there  is  a  correspond- 
ing kind  of  fear.  Without  the  inhibitory  action  and  the 
impulse  to  withdraw,  whether  precipitately  or  deliberately, 
which  are  due  to  the  various  fears  of  human  nature,  neither 
body   nor  mind  nor  morality  could  be  either  conserved  or 

1  Farrer,  Primitive  Manners  and  Customs,  p.  117  f. 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  WILL  237 

developed.  For  the  checks  and  inhibitions  and  retroactions 
of  every  form  of  human  life  are  quite  as  necessary  to  the 
preservation  and  evolution  of  that  life  as  are  the  more  positive 
and  direct  springs  of  action.  He  who  has  not  all  these  fears 
is  less  fully  equipped  for  life  ;  indeed,  he  is  less  likely  to  have 
the  genuine  virtue  of  courage.  For  the  virtue  of  courage 
consists  in  the  self-control  of  fear  ;  and  insensibility  to  fear, 
even  if  we  refuse  to  agree  to  Aristotle's  view  that  "  it  is  a 
vice  which  is  one  of  the  *  extremes '  of  courage,"  certainly 
must  not  be  identified  with  this  virtue. 

As  the  author  of  the  Nicomachean  Ethics  pointed  out,  cour- 
age is,  therefore,  not  to  be  confused  with  the  self-confidence 
of  the  sanguine  temperament  or  of  the  optimist;  neither 
does  it  resemble  that  impulsive  disregard  of  danger  which 
extreme  rage  causes :  "  So  we  find  in  Homer,  '  Put  might 
into  his  rage '  and  '  roused  his  wrath  and  rage '  and  '  fierce 
wrath  breathed  througli  his  nostrils,'  and  '  his  blood  boiled.'  " 
The  sanguine  man  and  the  optimist  may  be  courageous  ;  and 
the  angry  man  may  also  be  truly  brave.  Both  the  sanguine 
temperament  and  the  state  of  anger  are,  however,  distinctly 
unfavorable  to  the  genuine  virtue  of  courage.  Indeed,  the 
virtue  of  courage  is  more  apt  to  develop  in  the  choleric  and 
melancholic  temperaments ;  and  the  exercise  of  the  habit  of 
courage  is  plainly  for  the  time  impossible  when  one  is  under 
the  control  of  impulses  due  to  an  excessive  and  blind  rage. 

The  truth  is  that  the  greater  part  of  the  courage  of  the 
world's  bravest  souls  goes  into  their  lives  in  quiet  and  unob- 
trusive ways.  Invalids  who  meet  with  daily  self-control  the 
fear  of  pain  and  weakness,  women  who  either  calmly  but 
intelligently  await  the  terrors  of  childbirth  or  send  their 
grown  sons  out  to  do  battle  in  a  just  cause,  laborers  who 
pluckily  fight  for  a  decent  maintenance  and  education  for 
their  families  in  the  face  of  the  new  fears  with  which  the 
modern  organization  of  capital  is  surrounding  them,  the  good 
few  politicians  (where   there   be  any   such)   who   stand  for 


238  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

truth  and  justice  in  the  face  of  a  depressing  and  degrading 
dread  of  the  ''  boss  "  or  of  "  my  constituency,"  the  servants 
of  God  who  plead  for  righteousness  in  spite  of  the  fact  that 
they  may  forfeit  their  positions,  —  these,  and  such  as  they 
constitute  the  multitude  of  those  who  have  this  cardinal 
virtue  of  the  will  that  chooses  not  to  yield  to  fear.  My  friend, 
who  pluck ily  fought  to  the  end  for  the  one  hour  and  a  half  a 
day,  which  was  all  that  the  deadly  disease  would  allow  him, 
in  order  that  he  might  worthily  finish  his  good  work  of 
science,  was  amongst  the  bravest  of  men.  Kant,  working  away 
and  never  minding  but  subduing  the  constant  pain  in  his 
chest  that  he  might,  although  "  removing  knowledge,"  "  make 
room  for  faith,"  showed  much  more  of  genuine  courage  than 
some  generals  whose  tombs  adorn  Westminster  Abbey.  And 
no  more  valiant  hero  ever  died  in  battle  than  David  Living- 
stone found  dead  upon  his  knees  in  Africa. 

It  is  not  strange,  then,  that  the  kind  of  courage  most 
imperatively  needed  at  any  particular  stage  of  man's  develop- 
ment should  be  most  highly  esteemed  and  approbated  by  the 
ethical  judgment  of  that  age.  Even  in  the  estimate  of  the 
ancient  philosopher,^  '-'  The  term  courageous,  in  the  strictest 
sense,  will  be  applied  to  him  who  fearlessly  faces  an  honorable 
death  and  all  sudden  emergencies  which  involve  death  ;  and 
such  emergencies  mostly  occur  in  war."  But  a  man,  Aris- 
totle thinks,  would  be  "  a  maniac  or  quite  insensible  to  pain  " 
who  should  not  fear  "  even  earthquakes  and  breakers,  as  they 
say  is  the  case  with  the  Celts."  Both  these  statements  miss 
entirely  the  essential  qualities  of  the  virtue  of  courage.  For 
fearlessly  to  face  an  honorable  death  is  not  courage  unless  the 
fear  has  been  overcome  by  an  act  of  will ;  otherwise  it  is  the 
same  maniacal  rage  or  insensibility  to  pain  of  which  the  Celts 
are  accused.  But  to  control  the  fear  of  death  by  the  sea  or 
by  the  earthquake  requires  a  rarer  and  a  higher  kind  of  courage 
than  to  face  death  in  battle.  Almost  all  kinds  of  men  can, 
1  Nic.  Eth.,  Ill,  vi,  10. 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  WILL  239 

as  experts  tell  us,  without  great  difficulty  be  trained  to  bravery 
in  war ;  and  that  bragging  over  an  exclusive  claim  to  this  ex- 
hibition of  the  virtue  with  which  particular  persons,  tribes,  or 
nations,  so  often  go  forth  to  battle  is  quite  likely  to  take 
on  a  lower  tone  before  the  issue  is  fully  decided.  The 
Norsemen  in  their  hardy  and  bold  conquest  of  the  sea  have 
shown  as  much  courage  as  did  the  founders  of  the  Roman 
Empire.  Moreover,  as  man  becomes  more  truly  civilized,  less 
emphasis  is  placed  by  the  thoughtful  upon  the  particular 
manifestation  of  courage  which  Aristotle  considered  to  be- 
long to  the  concept  in  its  strictest  sense.  In  some  far-distant 
future  the  time  may  come  when  even  the  less  civilized  nations 
will  cease  to  agree  with  the  Greek  conception,  because  indi- 
vidual men  and  nations  will  have  ceased  to  recognize  the  fear- 
ful necessity  of  appealing  their  disputes  to  the  arbitrament 
of  war,  so-called.  Then  will  be  most  highly  esteemed  the 
courage  of  the  man  who  would  rather  suffer  wrong  than  do 
wrong,  who  is  more  afraid  of  not  doing  good  than  of  not 
getting  goods  ;  and  yet  who  is  ever  ready  to  face  even  death 
in  the  interests  of  righteousness  to  be  attained  or  unrighteous- 
ness to  be  opposed.  For  this  virtue  of  courage  will  never  be 
out  of  date ;  and  the  more  subtle  are  the  temptations  to  the 
vice  of  cowardice  and  the  more  deceitful  the  shams  of  cour- 
age, the  more  will  the  genuine  thing  be  needed  and  the  more 
highly  will  it  be  prized.  Under  such  improved  circumstances 
of  nations  so  civilized  as  no  longer  to  engage  in  war,  there 
would  seem  to  be  still  an  opportunity  for  the  ideally  cour- 
ageous man,  as  his  praises  are  sung  by  Wordsworth  in  his 
Happy   Warrior, 

"  Who,  if  he  be  called  upon  to  face 
Some  awful  moment  to  which  Heaven  has  joined 
Great  issues,  good  or  bad  for  human  kind, 
Is  happy  as  a  lover  .  .  . 

And,  through  the  heat  of  conflict,  keeps  the  law 
In  calmness  made  .  .  . 

More  brave  for  this,  that  he  hath  much  to  love." 


240  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

But  is  it  not  true  that  to  be  influenced  bj  certain  fears  is  a 
mark  of  the  Virtuous  Life,  and  that  the  absence  of  these  fears 
is  a  sign  of  stolidity  or  of  shamelessness  rather  than  of  the 
virtue  of  courage  ?  Are  there  not  fears  which  a  man  ought 
to  cherish  and  to  control  which  cannot  be  called  virtuous? 
These  questions  must  doubtless  be  answered  affirmatively, 
although  in  a  qualified  way.  Susceptibility  to  various  forms 
of  fear  is  a  natural  characteristic  of  the  human  animal.  And 
man,  besides  having  substantially  all  the  same  fears  as  the  more 
intelligent  of  the  lower  animals,  is  also  influenced  by  many 
are  that  specifically  human.  Moreover,  some  fears  are  so  con- 
nected with  the  higher  interests  of  human  life  that  they  ap- 
pear to  have,  as  fears,  a  real  ethical  character.  For  example, 
the  fear  of  being  disesteemed  by  one's  fellow  men,  or  of  being 
deemed  base,  may  become  more  potent,  because  it  seems  more 
ethically  worthy,  than  the  fear  of  the  loss  of  property  or  even 
of  the  loss  of  life.  Higher  yet  in  the  scale  of  values,  because 
of  its  connection  with  the  virtuous  life,  may  appear  the  fear  of 
doing  wrong,  or  that  "  fear  of  the  Lord  "  which  is  the  begin- 
ning of  wisdom.  There  is  also  the  curious  anomaly  of  the 
man  who  is  courageous  because  he  fears  more  —  not  the  being 
called,  but  the  really  being  a  coward,  than  he  fears  the  thing 
that  threatens  seriously  some  physical  or  material  interest. 
The  fear  of  losing  the  consciousness  of  honor  has  been  a  most 
powerful  motive  toward  some  of  the  noblest  deeds  of  history. 

It  may  be  said,  then,  in  some  true  and  pertinent  meaning  of 
the  words,  that  every  complete  man  ought  to  feel  all  the  kinds 
of  fear  to  which  man  is  subject,  when  liis  nature,  his  inter- 
ests, and  his  environment  are  considered  from  the  rational 
point  of  view ;  and,  furthermore,  that  he  ought  most  of  all  to 
fear  those  things  which  make  the  most  dangerous  and  effec- 
tive attacks  upon  his  superior  interests.  But  from  the  ethical 
point  of  view  the  most  fearful  thing  is  whatever  tends  to  in- 
hibit, or  to  make  him  retreat  from,  his  following  with  all  his 
will  the  moral  ideal. 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  WILL  241 

The  forms  of  conduct  which  arise  through  the  influence  of 
the  different  fears  of  man  are  certain  so-called  "  prudential 
virtues."  Prudence  as  a  virtue  frequently  is  the  rational  and 
voluntary  yielding  to  fear  in  respect  of  the  pursuit  of  ends  for 
the  realization  of  any  form  of  the  good  ;  and  the  particular 
display  of  prudence  has  its  place  assigned  in  the  scale  of 
moral  values  according  to  the  worth  of  the  end  in  the  inter- 
ests of  which  the  prudence  is  exercised.  Self-control  under 
the  influence  of  fear  may  be  called  virtuous  when  the  fear  is 
of  such  a  character  that  it  may  be  regarded  as  obligatory  upon 
the  will.  Prudence  is,  therefore,  for  all  men  an  indispensable 
but  most  distinctly  "  qualified  "  and  even  subordinate  kind  of 
virtue. 

It  follows,  then,  from  the  very  nature  of  both  virtues  and 
from  the  character  of  man's  physical  and  social  environment 
that  courage  and  prudence  are  usually  antithetic.  They  con- 
stantly qualify  each  other.  Shall  I  run  the  risk  —  to  life 
or  health,  to  property  or  happiness,  to  the  favor  of  men  or  to 
social  or  political  advancement,  or  even  to  the  interests  of 
those  dear  to  me  —  which  is  necessarily  involved  in  the  pur- 
suit at  this  particular  point,  of  the  end  which  I  have  chosen  ? 
If  I  say,  Yes,  it  is  the  courageous  answer  ;  if  I  say.  No,  it  is 
the  prudential.  When  the  end  is  one  the  attainment  of  which 
imposes  the  feeling  of  obligation,  a  conflict  of  duties,  and  a 
problem  of  moral  values,  is  certain  to  follow.  If  the  end  is 
worth  it,  I  am  in  duty  bound  to  run  the  risk.  The  cardinal 
virtue  of  the  will  —  courage  —  must  win  the  day,  or  I  am  not 
worthy  of  moral  approbation.  If  the  end  is  not  worth  the 
risk  —  "  not  worth,"  that  is,  in  the  scale  of  moral  values  — 
then  I  may  be  prudent ;  or  it  may  be  my  duty  to  be  prudent. 
It  is  noteworthy,  however,  that  all  yielding  to  fear  is  apt  to  be 
accompanied  by  a  certain  feeling  of  weakness,  littleness,  finite- 
ness.  Thus  that  excellent  Hindu  gentleman  who  succumbed 
to  the  threats  of  the  Brahmans  through  the  fear  of  losing 
caste  for  his  family,  and  did  penance  for  having  violated  their 

16 


242  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

rule  against  going  abroad,  even  if  it  be  admitted  that  his  pru- 
dence was  morally  justifiable,  suffered  in  the  sight  of  men  a 
certain  loss  of  esteem. 

But  what  if,  it  may  be  asked,  as  doubtless  often  happens, 
prudence  is  duty,  and  the  man  has  no  right  to  run  the  risk ; 
shall  we  say  that,  in  such  a  case,  courage  is  virtuous  ;  or  may 
it  not  even  be  the  crime  of  rashness,  —  not  true  courage  at 
all  ?  Here,  I  reply,  is  one  of  those  psychological  confusions 
with  which  the  discussion  of  the  nature  of  the  virtues  is  so 
fraught.  Courage,  or  self-control  in  the  presence  of  fear,  is 
always  a  virtue  ;  but  courage  is  not  the  only  virtue ;  and,  like 
all  the  qualified  virtues,  it  is  not  always  the  virtue  that  should 
come  to  the  front.  In  many  problems  of  conduct  there  is, 
therefore,  a  chance  for  a  seeming  compromise  between  the 
antithetic  virtues  of  courage  and  prudence.  This  takes  place 
oftenest,  perhaps,  in  the  form  of  a  change  of  the  chosen  means 
for  accomplishing  the  end ;  and  conduct  has  frequently  to  do 
with  the  way  in  which  men  choose  to  realize  their  ends.  If, 
then,  without  yielding  through  fear  the  chosen  end,  one  can 
follow  that  end  more  successfully  in  some  other  than  the 
chosen  way,  there  is  a  chance  to  effect  an  apparent  blend  of 
courage  and  prudence.  One  may  continue  to  be  courageous 
in  the  following  of  the  prudentially  "  more  excellent  way." 
Men  who  succeed  best  by  such  compromises  get  most  credit 
for  a  kind  of  fairly  courageous  prudence,  a  judicious  courage. 
But,  unless  there  is  something  more  of  this  cardinal  virtue  of 
will  to  these  men,  they  have  no  fitness  for  heroic  deeds,  nor 
do  they  attain  the  sublimer  heights  of  character. 

In  order  to  discover  the  key  for  unlocking  this  puzzle  of 
seemingly  inherent  and  unavoidable  sacrifice  of  virtue  to  fear, 
we  must  turn  to  the  positive  side  of  the  human  soul,  to  the 
motives  and  inducements  furnished  by  the  moral  ideals.  Thus 
for  every  negative  prudential  virtue  as  an  act  born  of  fear, 
there  is  found  a  correlative  virtuous  act  of  a  courageous  sort. 
The  prudential  fear  of  death  becomes  the  courageous  guarding 


VIRTUES   OF   THE  WILL  243 

of  life  —  but  only  so  long  as  life  can  be  made  to  serve  the 
ends  that  are  set  by  the  moral  ideals.  The  prudential  fears 
of  losing  property,  position,  public  favor,  or  even  reputation 
and  influence,  are  lost  in  the  courageous  defence  and  use  of 
all  these  opportunities  —  but  only  so  long  and  so  far  as  they 
contribute  to  the  realization  of  the  moral  ideals.  Even  the 
fear  of  doing  wrong  is  transformed  into  a  passionate  and 
brave  devotion  to  the  ideal  of  duty  ;  and  that  fear  of  the 
Lord  which  is  only  the  beginning  of  wisdom  is  lost  in  the  per- 
fect love  which  casteth  out  all  fear.  How  splendidly  this 
cardinal  virtue  of  the  will,  this  courageous  and  positive  devo- 
tion to  the  Moral  Ideal,  may  shine  forth  in  the  expressions  of 
finite  moral  consciousness  is  shown  in  a  startling  manner  by 
the  following  declaration  of  John  Stuart  Mill  ^ :  ''  I  will  call  no 
being  good,  who  is  not  what  I  mean  when  I  apply  that  epithet 
to  my  fellow- creatures  ;  and  if  such  a  being  can  sentence  me 
to  hell  for  not  calling  him  so,  to  hell  I  will  go."  So,  what 
but  the  sublimest  confidence  in  a  moral  ideal  that  is  worthy 
of  being  bravely  followed  at  whatever  risk  to  interests  not 
essentially  and  inseparably  part  of  itself,  could  have  led  that 
nobleman  among  my  friends,  in  all  modesty  to  say  :  **  I  do 
not  believe  there  is  power  enough  in  the  universe  to  make  me 
tell  a  lie."  But  neither  of  these  declarations  can  possibly  be 
explained  in  consistency  with  a  philosophy  of  conduct  which 
makes  any  prudential  principle  supreme,  either  in  the  theory 
or  the  practice  of  morality. 

How  cardinal  a  virtue  is  courage  in  every  form  of  its 
manifestation  might  also  be  shown  by  an  historical  investi- 
gation into  the  place  which  it  has  always  held  amongst  those 
forms  of  conduct  most  esteemed  by  the  moral  consciousness 
of  mankind.  In  the  earlier  and  lower  stages  of  evolution, 
whatever  other  virtues  are  lacking,  courage  must  be  most 
insisted  upon.  All  the  immediate  inducements  of  discipline 
and  of  praise,  as  well  as  the  more  remote  social,  political,  and 

1  Examination  of  Sir  Wra.  Hamilton's  Philosophy,  I,  p.  131. 


244  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

even  religious  rewards  of  this  virtue,  tend  to  cultivate  it.  Of 
the  North  American  Indian  we  are  told  ^  that,  for  him  "  death 
is  rather  an  event  of  gladness  than  of  terror,  bringing  him 
rest  or  enjoyment  after  his  period  of  toil ;  nor  does  he  fear  to 
go  to  a  land  which  all  his  life  long  he  has  heard  abounds  in 
rewards  without  punishments."  In  the  form  of  courageous 
endurance  of  suffering  and  scorn  of  danger  in  the  interests  of 
truth,  early  Christianity  insisted  upon  this  virtue ;  and  it  thus 
won  for  itself  the  admiration  which  the  brave  religious  devotee 
has  commanded  in  all  ages  and  under  all  circumstances. 
Mediaeval  Germanic  Christianity  overestimated,  or  rather 
wrongly  conceived,  this  essential  virtue ;  and  so  —  to  quote 
from  Paulsen :  ^  "  The  old  Saxon  poem  of  the  life  of  Jesus 
(the  Heliand)  makes  Christ  a  mighty  lord  and  the  disciples 
his  retainers;  the  transformation  shows  how  impossible  it 
was  for  the  Saxons  to  imagine  the  real  Jesus  and  his  fol- 
lowers." And  in  the  modern  Occidental  civilizations,  where 
the  ordinary  daily  life  of  the  multitude  is  all  "  sicklied  o'er 
with  the  pale  cast"  of  prudential  considerations,  the  occur- 
rence of  war,  riot,  fire,  pestilence,  gives  occasion  to  the 
spontaneous  outburst  of  approbation  which  always,  and  fitly, 
greets  any  unusual  display  of  this  cardinal  virtue  of  the  will. 
In  respect  for  this  virtue  man  is  essentially  the  same  in  all 
stages  of  the  development  of  his  moral  consciousness. 

Cowardice  is,  on  the  other  hand,  one  of  the  most  funda- 
mental and  mortal  forms  of  bad  conduct ;  it  is  essentially 
and  eternally  bad,  because  it  vitiates  and  thwarts  every  kind 
of  virtuous  conduct  by  yielding  to  the  fears  which  stand  in  the 
way  of  the  pursuit  of  moral  good.  No  good  can  be  gained 
for  man  without  encountering  pain.  No  virtue  can  be  exer- 
cised if  the  individual  will  cannot  control  the  conduct  in  spite 
of  the  influence  from  the  fear  of  pain.     And  here  the  current 

1  J.  A.  Farrer,  Primitive  Manners  and  Customs,  p.  39,  quoting  from  School- 
craft. 
«  A  System  of  Ethics,  p.  119. 


VIRTUES   OF   THE  WILL  245 

distinctions  between  ** physical  courage"  and  "moral  cour- 
age," or  between  "  true  courage  "  and  "  false  courage,"  are  for 
the  most  part  mistaken  and  mischievous.  There  is  no  courage 
which  is  not  moral ;  and  there  is  little  use  for  courage  that 
cannot  control  the  bodily  impulses  which  are  produced  by  the 
various  forms  of  fear.  True  courage  is  simply  courage  ;  and 
so-called  false  courage  is  simply  the  sham  of  courage,  which 
may  be  only  another  and  subtler  form  of  cowardice.  But 
cowardice  is  always  and  everywhere  a  vice ;  and  it  is  often 
the  most  deplorable  and  harmful  of  vices. 

The  moral  degradation  from  the  vice  of  cowardice,  as  well 
as  the  mischievous  results  which  follow  indulgence  in  this 
vice,  admit  of  being  estimated  by  a  sort  of  ethical  standard 
or  scale.  What  is  the  particular  character  of  the  fear,  and 
with  reference  to  what  sort  of  good  does  it  apply  ?  The 
lower  in  the  ethical  scale  stands  the  fear  in  yielding  to  which 
the  cowardice  consists,  and  the  less  worthy  ethically  are  the 
ends  at  which  the  prudential  considerations  aim,  the  more 
degrading  and,  on  the  whole,  more  harmful,  is  the  resulting 
vice  of  cowardice.  The  merchant  who,  through  fear  of  losing 
property  or  of  failing  to  gain  it,  consents  to  lies  and  bribery, 
the  politician  who  does  the  same  thing  through  fear  of  losing 
his  place,  the  public  teacher  who  flinches  in  telling  the  truth 
which  it  is  his  duty  to  tell,  are  all  baser  cowards  than  is  the 
soldier  who,  in  the  panic  fear  of  losing  his  life,  turns  his  back 
upon  his  officer  and  precipitately  leaves  the  field  of  battle. 
Yet,  in  these  days,  the  one  is  surely  disgraced  as  a  poltroon; 
the  other  is  perhaps  commended  for  his  prudence. 

Another  consideration  which  enhances  the  meanness  and 
the  dangerous  character  of  cowardice  is  the  number  of  other 
vices  whose  minister,  or  easy  prey,  the  coward  must  become. 
For  the  coward  is  the  man  subject  to  fear  and  not  the 
master  of  his  fears.  And  almost  every  human  vice,  on 
certain  frequent  occasions,  can  appeal  to  our  fears ;  while 
every  antithetic  virtue  must  often  be  practised  bravely,  if 


I 


246  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

practised  at  all.  Consider  how  avarice  feeds  cowardice  and 
is  responsive  to  the  prudential  considerations  onlj.  Consider 
how  ambition  —  the  more  the  baser  —  does  the  same  thing. 
And  how  is  lust  made  more  despicable  when  allied  with 
cowardice !  What  virtue  can  you  expect,  in  an  evil  genera- 
tion —  and  the  generation  is  always  prevailingly  evil  —  from 
the  soul  afflicted  with  the  incurable  vice  of  cowardice  ?  I 
believe  it  is  quite  warranted  by  the  facts  to  declare  that 
cowardice  and  avarice  are  the  two  worst,  most  mischievous, 
and  most  degrading  vices  of  the  nation  at  the  present  time  ;  — 
cowardice  that  is  begotten  and  nurtured  in  the  vice  of  avarice, 
and  avarice  that  is  made  all  the  more  contemptible  and  perni- 
cious because  it  is  so  cowardly.  As  one  of  our  leading 
novelists  has  written :  "  We  are  a  cowardly  generation,  and 
men  shrink  from  suffering  now,  as  their  fathers  shrank  from 
dishonor  in  the  rougher  times.  The  Lotus  hangs  within  the 
reach  of  all,  and  in  the  lives  of  many  '  it  is  always  afternoon,' 
as  for  the  Lotus  Eaters.  The  fruit  takes  many  shapes  and 
names  ;  it  is  called  Divorce,  it  is  called  Morphia,  it  is  called 
Compromise,  it  is  designated  in  a  thousand  ways  and  justified 
by  ten  thousand  specious  arguments,  but  it  means  only  one 
thing :  Escape  from  Pain." 

It  is  not  without  significance  that,  in  the  order  of  treatment 
suggested  by  our  classification  of  the  virtues,  we  now  pass  on 
to  consider  the  virtue  of  Temperance.  For  temperance,  like 
courage,  is  mainly  a  virtue  of  self-control ;  although,  like 
courage  and  all  the  other  particular  virtues,  it  is  qualified  by 
other  virtues  as  respects  the  rightful  position  which  it  holds 
in  the  Virtuous  Life.  But  while  courage  is  the  enlightened 
and  feeling  Self  in  control  of  itself,  in  spite  of  fear,  temperance 
is  the  same  enlightened  and  feeling  Self  holding  the  control 
over  all  its  own  positive  impulses  to  seek  the  various  forms 
of  good,  —  that  is,  over  its  own  "  springs  of  action  "  so-called. 
Temperance  is  a  virtue  of  the  Will,  because  in  its  essential 
nature  it  emphasizes  seZ/-control ;  but  unless  it  be  enlightened 


VIRTUES   OF   THE  WILL  247 

by  intelligence,  the  control  can  have  no  moral  character ;  that 
is  to  saj,  in  a  word,  it  is  not  control  of  the  Self  at  all.  Indeed, 
the  very  term  signifies  that  virtuousness  here  requires  the 
moderation  rather  than  the  total  suppression  of  the  impulses 
to  action.  It  is  the  intelligence  of  man  which  furnishes  the 
rules  for  this  kind  of  self-control ;  but  it  is  the  will  that  actu- 
ally moderates,  according  to  the  rules  of  moderation  which 
experience  furnishes  and  wisdom  dictates  ;  I  have,  therefore, 
called  temperance  a  cardinal  but  qualified  virtue  of  the  will. 

Temperance,  then,  is  the  rational  moderation  by  self- 
control  of  every  form  of  natural  impulse,  positive  or  defen- 
sive, toward  all  kinds  of  good.  The  germ  of  the  complete 
conception  is  better  given  (better,  that  is,  than  in  the  word 
i^yKpareia)  in  the  Greek  aaycfipoa-uvTj — a  "healthy-minded,"  ra- 
tional will.  But  even  Aristotle,  ^  the  most  prominent  scien- 
tific exponent  of  the  conception,  limits  this  virtue  to  "  those 
kinds  of  pleasure  which  are  common  to  the  lower  animals ; " 
and,  then,  more  definitely  to  **  the  sense  of  touch,  alike  in  the 
pleasures  of  eating,  drinking,  and  of  sexual  intercourse."  It 
is  more  consistent,  however,  both  with  a  profound  psychology 
and  with  the  interests  of  ethics  to  extend  the  conception  to 
all  the  natural  impulses  of  man.  This  extensiveness  charac- 
terizes the  view  of  the  more  distinctively  Christian  doctrine ; 
the  good  Christian  keeps  all  his  appetites,  passions,  and 
desires,  under  strict  control  in  the  interests  of  the  ideally 
virtuous  life  which  he  is  trying  to  realize.  The  same  fulness 
of  conception  belongs  to  modern  ethics,  in  spite  of  the  present 
unfortunate  popular  limitation  of  the  word  "  temperance  "  to 
moderation,  or  even  ascetic  abstinence,  in  respect  of  one 
artificial  form  of  a  subordinate  kind  of  the  human  appetites. 
The  extent  of  the  more  comprehensive  and  refined  idea  may 
be  seen  in  this  declaration  of  "  holy  "  George  Herbert :  "  To 
put  on  the  profound  humility  and  the  exact  temperance  of 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  to  keep  them  on  in  the  sunshine 
1  Nic.  Eth.,  m,  X  t 


248  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

and  noon  of  prosperity,  is  as  necessary  and  as  difficult,  at  least, 
as  to  be  clothed  with  perfect  patience  and  true  Christian 
fortitude  in  the  cold,  midnight  storms  of  persecution  and 
adversity."  Here  humility,  or  the  rational  will  in  control  of 
that  impulse  to  haughtiness  to  which  the  prosperous  man  is 
tempted,  is  rightly  coupled  with  temperance.  For  to  temper^ 
or  modify,  by  self-control,  all  the  natural  impulses  is  a 
cardinal  excellence  of  will  which  is  demanded  in  the  pursuit 
of  the  moral  Ideal. 

Further  insight  into  the  nature  of  this  particular  virtue,  as 
bearing  upon  the  general  theory  of  virtue  is  gained  by  consid- 
ering the  fundamental  relations  in  which  the  varying  inten- 
sities of  the  impulsive  elements  of  human  nature  stand  to  the 
cultivation  of  a  genuine  strength  of  character.  It  is  custom- 
ary to  speak  —  and  this  accords  with  universal  experience  — 
of  different  degrees  in  the  strength,  naturally,  of  the  various 
appetites,  passions,  and  desires.  One  man  is  said  to  be  born 
with  "  strong  "  and  another  with  "  weak  "  appetites  or  passions, 
—  either  including  the  general  outfit,  as  it  were,  or  selecting 
some  one  or  more  examples.  A  is  naturally  "  passionate " 
(meaning  a  man  born  with  tendencies  to  anger  which  rise 
above  the  average  level  of  intensity)  ;  but  B  is  *'  lustful "  (in 
the  narrower  meaning  of  the  word  )  ;  and  as  for  (7,  the  desire 
to  acquire  property  has  been  especially  forceful  and  control- 
ling from  almost  the  beginning  of  his  conscious  life. 

Two  things  are  to  be  observed  touching  the  psychological 
relation  in  which  this  so-called  strength  of  the  impulses 
stands  to  the  acquirement  of  strength  of  character,  to  the 
Virtuous  Life  in  so  far  as  it  consists  in  energy  of  self-deter- 
mining Will.  First :  strength  of  character  is  dependent  upon 
a  certain  natural  inheritance  or  endowment  of  intensity  to 
the  appetites,  passions,  and  desires ;  the  man  who  is  weak  in 
respect  of  all  these  springs  of  action  can  scarcely  become  a 
man  of  strong  character.  But,  second,  the  reverse  or  com- 
plementary truth  is  this :  unless  these  appetites,  passions,  and 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  WILL  249 

desires  are  tempered  by  self-control  —  unless,  that  is  to  say, 
the  virtue  of  will  which  is  called  temperance,  is  called  forth 
and  cultivated  —  their  very  intensity  becomes  a  source  of 
moral  weakness.  For  the  centre  of  the  Moral  Self  is  apt  to 
become  occupied  by  some  dominant  impulse,  which  from  this 
centre  controls  the  courses  of  conduct  to  the  impairment  or 
the  destruction  of  a  genuine  moral  strength.  Such  a  thing  as 
a  maximum  intensity  of  all  the  varied  and  numerous  forms  of 
impulse  is,  of  course,  impossible  of  realization ;  for  they  sway 
the  will  of  the  morally  weak  man  in  different  and  often  in 
contrary  directions.  The  strength  of  the  maniac  is  the 
nearest  approach  to  the  resultant  in  character,  when  all  the 
impulsive  forces  of  the  soul  are  trying,  since  they  cannot  rage 
together,  to  get  their  turn  in  the  control  of  the  will.  But 
strong  appetites,  passions  and  desires,  when  tempered  by  self- 
control,  are  constituents  of  a  strong  and  effective  and  morally 
admirable  manhood.  Thus  Temperance  becomes  a  cardinal 
and  indispensable  Virtue  of  the  Will. 

The  same  thing,  in  a  way,  is  true  of  the  appetites,  passions, 
and  desires  of  man,  which  was  seen  to  be  true  of  human  fears. 
There  is  a  general  outfit  of  such  impulses  which  all  com- 
pletely constituted  human  beings  possess  in  varying  degrees 
of  intensity  belonging  to  each.  To  be  deficient  in  any  of 
them  is  to  lack  some  of  the  qualifications  of  manhood,  and  so 
to  be  incapable  of  certain  forms  of  the  virtue  of  temperance. 
These  different  impulses  are  themselves  capable  of  being 
arranged  in  a  scale  of  values,  corresponding  to  the  relation 
which  they  sustain  to  the  Self  in  its  pursuit  of  the  moral 
Ideal.  Thus,  to  control  the  appetites  in  the  interest  of 
almost  every  form  of  desire  —  the  desire  for  property,  the 
desire  for  esteem  of  one's  fellows,  the  desire  for  knowledge, 
or  the  desire  to  succeed  in  one's  profession  —  is  recognized  as 
a  species  of  the  virtue  of  temperance.  But  desires  themselves 
have  different  values  by  reason  of  their  relation  to  the  values 
of  the  ends  desired,  if  not  by  virtue  of  their  own  inherent 


250  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

worth.  Nor  can  one  stop  with  this  admission.  For  the 
various  affections,  the  loves  and  hates  of  mankind,  make 
different  claims  upon  the  voluntary  powers  to  exercise  this 
cardinal  virtue,  self-control,  in  the  interests  of  moral  ends. 
For  example,  it  is  one's  duty  to  control  one's  appetites,  so  far 
as  their  gratification  interferes  with  the  desire  for  property  or 
for  professional  success,  which  desire  in  its  turn  ought  to  be 
tempered  in  the  interests  of  one's  affection  for  one's  family  or 
for  the  community  of  which  one  is  a  member. 

Thus  the  mind  is  led  around  to  the  same  point  of  starting 
again.  There  are  springs  of  action,  desires  and  affections  and 
longings,  which  ought  to  he  allowed  to  control  the  conduct  in 
preference  to  other  springs  of  action.  The  perfectly  moral 
man,  in  respect  of  this  virtue  of  temperance,  will  not  be  the 
man  without  passions  and  desires  ;  much  less  will  he  be  the  man 
without  strong  affections  and  intense  enthusiasms.  The  cold- 
blooded, unaffectionate,  imperturbable  man  is  not  the  Ideal 
Self.  The  exaltation  which  the  ancient  Stoical  picture  of 
the  "  good  man  "  gave  to  this  virtue  of  temperance  was  often 
itself  intemperate,  and  therefore  unsatisfactory  to  the  most 
highly  developed  moral  consciousness  of  mankind.  Ardent 
desires  for  the  various  kinds  of  good,  warm  affections  toward 
men  in  the  different  social  relations,  intense  hatred  of  un- 
righteousness and  of  those  who  make  prey  of  their  fellows, 
and  passionate  devotion  to  righteousness,  —  these  are  not 
inconsistent  with  a  virtuous  self-control.  But  the  full-orbed 
virtue  is  the  Moral  Self  controlling  its  own  springs  of  action 
in  accordance  with  a  rational  pursuit  of  the  Moral  Ideal. 

In  the  general  evolution  of  humanity  there  are  three  forms 
of  this  virtue  which  are  most  imperatively  demanded  by  the 
very  constitution  of  society,  and  in  the  interests  of  its  per- 
petuation. These  are  the  self-control  of  anger,  of  sexual 
appetite,  and  of  the  desire  for  property.  Among  the  most 
undeveloped  peoples  ethically,  the  restriction  of  anger,  lust,  and 
avarice  is  necessarily  provided  for  in  some  manner.     Other- 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  WILL  251 

wise  there  could  be  no  community  life,  no  most  rude  and  primi- 
tive organization  of  the  family,  no  acquirement  of  property 
either  by  the  individual  or  by  the  commune.  Enforced  control 
as  respects  these  three  forms  of  impulse  nourishes  the  begin- 
nings of  the  virtue  of  temperance.  The  various  concrete 
forms  of  this  educative  control  by  the  community  have,  in- 
deed, so  often  been  at  variance  with  all  the  modern  ideas 
of  truth,  justice,  and  good  sense,  as  to  conceal  and  perhaps, 
seemingly  pervert  their  real  ethical  significance  and  value. 
But  the  real  point  which  must  be  insisted  upon  as  of  impor- 
tance in  framing  a  theory  of  the  Virtuous  Life  remains  fixed 
and  luminous  for  the  eye  of  the  student  of  ethics  whose 
insight  is  keen  and  penetrating.  It  is  simply  this :  under  all 
circumstances,  and  in  all  grades  of  human  development, 
the  good  man  must  in  some  prescribed  ways  and  to  some 
obviously  appreciable  and  worthy  extent,  voluntarily  temper 
his  anger,  his  lust,  and  his  avarice,  by  consideration  for  the 
interests  of  others.  Temperance  or  self-control  in  respect  of 
the  appetite  of  sex,  the  passion  of  anger,  and  the  desire  of 
property,  is  a  virtue  prescribed  as  necessary  for  even  the 
most  imperfect  correspondence  to  the  lowest  conception  of 
an  ideal  manhood. 

The  natural  passion  of  anger  is  part  of  the  equipment 
which  man  has,  in  common  with  the  other  higher  animals, 
to  defend  his  interests  of  every  kind  against  every  species  of 
attack.  In  its  crudest  form  it  expresses  itself  as  the  impulse 
to  strike  at  once,  to  strike  hard,  and  to  maim  or  destroy  the 
being  which  makes  the  attack.  If,  however,  this  passion 
cannot  find  such  expression  because  of  inability  to  get  at 
the  offender,  or  if  it  is  restrained  by  some  form  of  fear,  it 
becomes  the  spirit  of  hatred  and  the  desire  for  revenge.  The 
indulgence,  or  rather  the  exercise,  of  anger  becomes  a  matter 
of  moral  action,  an  affair  of  good  or  bad  conduct,  when  it 
acquires  those  ethical  qualifications  of  will,  feeling,  and  judg- 
ment which  characterize  all   forms  of   conduct  properly  so- 


262  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

called.  A  being  deficient  in  every  phase  and  degree  of  this 
passion  would,  indeed,  scarcely  be  capable  of  defending 
against  attack  any  one  of  the  many  human  interests ;  but  a 
being  incapable  of  developing  the  virtue  of  temperance  in  the 
control  of  anger  would  remain  still  beastly  in  this  respect. 
The  higher  in  the  scale  of  values  stands  the  interest  which 
is  attacked,  the  more  reasonable  and  even  praiseworthy  the 
anger  may  become ;  but  always  only  if  it  is  tempered  by  the 
will  under  the  influence  of  the  appropriate  motives.  These 
motives  may  lie  either  in  kindly  feelings,  or  in  some  form  of 
just  judgment  respecting  the  merits  of  the  case,  or  in  regard 
to  the  consequences  upon  ourselves  and  others  of  either  the 
indulgence  or  the  repression  of  the  anger.  But  all  these 
so-called  motives  represent  aspects  of  that  selfhood  which 
corresponds  to  the  moral  ideal;  and  into  that  ideal  Moral 
Self  temperate  anger  must  enter  as  an  important  phase 
of  its  Virtuous  Life.  Even  the  Personal  Absolute  cannot  be 
conceived  of  as  an  ethically  Ideal  Self  without  laying  empha- 
sis on  his  voluntary  and  affective  resentment  at  whatever 
attacks  those  interests  that  are  of  the  highest  worth. 

The  crudest  and  most  primitive  way  of  bringing  about  the 
initial  steps  in  the  self-control  of  anger  is  the  punishment  of 
its  expression  by  returning  the  consequences  in  kind.  Life 
for  life,  an  eye  for  an  eye,  and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth.  And 
amongst  peoples  of  the  lower  stages  of  ethical  development, 

—  savages  of  the  twentieth  century  B.  c,  or  of  the  twentieth 
century  a.  d.,  and  whether  situate  in  ancient  Egypt  or  in 
modern  England,  in  ancient  Mexico  or  in  America  of  to-day, 

—  the  punishment  for  indulging  anger,  like  the  original  in- 
dulgence in  the  anger,  is  a  matter  of  good  or  bad  conscience. 
That  is  to  say,  the  deed  is  approbated  as  obligatory  by  the 
ethical  judgment  of  the  doer,  or  it  is  disapproved  and  re- 
warded accordingly. 

Nor  is  the  ethics  of  these  complex  reciprocities  essentially 
altered  by  all  manner  of  startlingly  false  conceptions  of  per- 


VIRTUES  OF   THE   WILL  253 

sonality  and  personal  responsibility.  Where  the  passions  are 
hot  and  unrestrained  by  refined  moral  motives,  and  where 
human  life  is  cheap,  one  deed  of  blind,  impulsive  rage  may 
kindle  a  bloody  feud  which  will  involve  scores  of  men,  and 
last  through  generations  as  yet  unborn  when  the  deed  was 
committed.  So  in  ancient  Germany,  whose  poet  Beowulf 
treats  the  punishment  of  Cain  for  Abel's  murder  as  a  divine 
act  of  blood-revenge.  Here  "  came  the  great  step  of  civiliza- 
tion which  compounded  a  murder  by  the  payment  of  a  definite 
price"  (the  wergild^  or  man-price).^  The  very  unutilitarian 
method  of  expressing  the  disapproval  of  one  angry  killing  by 
more  of  vengeful  killing  now  gives  place  to  a  method  which 
tends  to  make  a  prudential  virtue  out  of  the  self-control  of 
the  passion.  Thus,  the  impression  is  deepened  that  such  con- 
duct does  not  pay.  In  other  cases,  as  in  the  Hebrew  law, 
for  example,^  the  custom  of  blood-revenge  was  tempered  by 
introducing  the  distinction  between  accidental  killing  and 
deliberate,  malicious  murder,  and  by  interposing  some  repre- 
sentation of  the  public  sentiment  and  authority  between  the 
culprit  and  his  punishment  (in  this  case,  "  the  elders  of  his 
city,"  who  were  to  "  send  and  fetch  him  thence,  and  deliver 
him  into  the  hand  of  the  avenger  of  blood").  "Besides 
spiritual  terrors,"  says  Farrer,^  "  secular  punishment  has  a 
well-defined  place  among  savages,  to  check  the  extreme  in- 
dulgence of  hatred  or  passion.  It  is  doubtful  whether  any 
tribe  is  so  indifferent  to  the  criminality  of  murder  as  to  be 
destitute  of  customary  penal  laws  to  prevent  or  punish  it." 

There  are  not  wanting  traces,  however,  even  among  those 
low  down  in  the  scale  of  ethical  development,  of  a  more 
enlightened  judgment  and  a  better  sentiment  as  to  the  wrong 
of  intemperate  anger.  In  the  same  Deuteronomic  code  which 
enjoins  the   slaughter  of  women  and  children  in   the  city 

1  See  Gummere,  Germanic  Origins,  p.  178. 

2  See  Deut.  xix. 

*  Primitive  Manners  and  Customs,  p.  106. 


254  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

which  resists  the  Israelites,  is  found  not  only  the  injunction 
to  love  one's  neighbor,  but  the  command,  "  Love  ye  therefore 
the  stranger:  for  ye  were  strangers  in  the  land  of  Egypt." 
While  the  savage  blood  and  ferocious  customs  of  the  ances- 
tors of  those  races  which  consider  themselves  "  superior  "  are 
still  frequently  shown  in  lynchings  and  other  brutalities  at 
home  and  in  shocking  barbarities  in  foreign  war,  it  is  fair  not 
to  forget  what  Buddhism  has  done  to  temper  anger  and  to 
encourage  pity,  gentleness,  and  kindness  amongst  millions  of 
the  so-called  "  inferior "  races.  And  if  the  modern  Italian 
still  extols  the  sweetness  and  commends  the  duty  of  revenge, 
the  Yorubas  of  Central  Africa  may  certainly  extend  to  him  a 
fit  invitation  to  reflect  upon  the  ethical  spirit  of  some  of  the 
maxims  current  among  them :  "  Ashes  fly  back  in  the  face  of 
the  thrower."  "He  who  injures  another  injures  himself." 
"  Anger  benefits  no  one."  "  We  should  not  treat  others  with 
contempt."     "  He  that  forgives  gains  the  victory." 

It  is  instructive  to  notice  how  these  "  savage  (?)  proverbs  " 
touch  at  a  vital  point  almost  all  the  motives  which  may  be 
pleaded  in  behalf  of  the  virtue  of  temperance  as  the  self- 
control  of  the  natural  passion  of  anger.  It  should  be  culti- 
vated as  a  prudential  virtue ;  for  intemperate  anger  injures 
him  who  indulges  it  as  surely  as  ashes  thrown  against  the 
wind  fly  back  in  the  face  of  the  thrower.  And  society  re- 
ceives no  benefit  from  such  anger.  For  although  the  rational 
and  tempered  anger  of  the  good  man  is  an  indispensable  and 
priceless  safeguard  of  social  interests,  a  prime  social  virtue, 
savage  rage  "  benefits  no  one."  Men  generally  regard  others 
as  like  themselves,  worthy  of  being  treated  otherwise  than  in 
blind  rage  or  sullen  contempt ;  while  the  dignity  and  worth  of 
not  only  the  restraint  of  anger  but  even,  and  especially,  of  the 
spirit  that  goes  beyond  and  stands  ready  to  pardon  the  injury 
which  has  caused  the  anger,  belong  to  the  man  who,  by  virtue 
of  his  own  rational  Will,  has  made  a  conquest  of  his  lower  self. 
To  conquer  thus  one's  self  is  better  than  to  take  a  city. 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  WILL  255 

While,  then,  this  particular  form  of  temperance  has  a 
hard  lot  amongst  men  in  their  lowest,  and  still  low,  stage  of 
moral  evolution,  the  germinal  ideas  and  sentiments  from 
which  the  virtue  may  be  developed  are  widely  sown  in  human 
minds,  if  they  are  not  everywhere  present.  And  the  ancient 
Scandinavian  who  boasts :  "  I  have  walked  with  bloody  brand 
and  whistling  spear,  with  the  wound-bird  following  me,"  has 
perhaps  not  more  truly  submerged  this  virtue  in  his  false 
ideal  of  bravery  than  his  modern  descendant,  who  is  ready  to 
kill  or  to  refrain  from  killing,  in  accordance  with  his  idea  of 
the  interests  of  trade,  has  lost  sight  of  the  same  virtue  in  a 
dominant  avariciousness. 

Some  kind  of  self-control  of  the  sexual  appetite  also  is  ex- 
acted by  the  prevalent  customs,  laws,  and  ethical  ideals, 
under  all  conditions  and  in  even  the  lowest  stages  of  man's 
ethical  development.  But  the  great  variety  of  customs,  laws, 
and  ideals  which  give  sanction  to  the  relations  of  the  sexes 
as  dependent  upon  this  appetite  has  already  been  noticed 
(p.  120  f).  "The  morality  of  the  family  is  varied  and 
changeable"  ;  and,  indeed,  as  the  writer  from  whom  I  quote 
this  sentence,^  and  others  have  sufficiently  shown,  there  is  no 
other  matter  of  morals  upon  which  such  widely  and  startlingly 
different  judgments  and  practices  may  be  adduced  as  upon  this  : 
What  relations  of  the  sexes  are  right,  what  wrong ;  or  how 
shall  the  sexual  appetite  be  controlled  in  the  interests  of  the 
truly  virtuous  life  ? 

On  the  one  hand,  we  find  the  most  refined  Christian  morals 
of  to-day  limiting  the  gratification  of  the  appetite  of  sex  to  a 
chaste  monogamous  marriage,  and  still,  although  somewhat 
doubtfully,  defending  the  limitation  by  reference  to  some 
moral  intuition  or  even  to  some  primitive  divine  command. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  the  student  of  human  history  discovers 
almost  every  kind  of  license  permitted  at  some  time  and 
somewhere  —  in  respect  of  the  limits   of  consanguinity,  of 

1  Schurman,  The  Ethical  Import  of  Darwinism,  p.  258. 


256  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

the  number  of  wives  or  husbands,  of  the  period  during  which 
the  relations  ought  to  hold  good,  of  the  grounds  on  which  the 
relations  may  properly  be  severed,  and  of  frequency  of  indul- 
gence, etc.     In  Milton's  apostrophe  to  marriage, 

<*  Hail,  wedded  love,  mysterious  law,  true  source 
Of  human  oifspring,  sole  propriety 
111  Paradise  of  all  things  common  else," 

poetical  expression  is  given  to  one  form  of  thought  as  to  what 
is  commanded  by  the  virtue  of  temperance  in  this  regard. 
Standing  at  the  other  extreme  are  such  views  as  those  of  the 
Mexicans,  who  held  the  possession  of  a  large  number  of  wives 
to  be  a  proof  of  superiority  ;  or  the  Ashantee  law,  which  al- 
lowed the  king  three  thousand  three  hundred  and  thirty-three 
wives  ;  or  the  right  yielded  to  the  king  of  Yoruba  to  have  as 
many  wives  as,  linked  hand  in  hand,  would  reach  across  his 
kingdom.  Somewhere  between  stands  the  tempered  indulgence 
permitted  by  custom  to  the  patriarchs,  or  to  their  descendants 
by  the  Mosaic  law ;  and,  indeed,  the  ethical  theories,  and 
practices  of  the  multitude  amongst  modern  Christian  nations. 
And  then  there  is  the  position  taken  by  the  Confucian  ethics 
in  Old  Japan,  which,  apparently,  attached  no  moral  signifi- 
cance whatever  to  the  intercourse  of  the  sexes  in  itself  consid- 
ered, but  only  as  it  became  dependent  upon  the  supreme  virtue 
of  personal  loyalty. 

The  reasons  for  such  great  divergence  in  the  views  and 
practices  of  men  as  to  what  ought  to  be  the  temperate,  ration- 
ally self-controlled  indulgence  of  the  sexual  appetite,  although 
in  certain  respects  obscure,  are  in  the  main  not  impossible  to 
appreciate.  They  may  be  touched  upon  in  the  following  line 
of  considerations.  The  appetite  of  sex  is,  with  the  exception 
of  the  appetite  for  food  and  drink,  the  most  imperative  of  the 
bodily  impulses.  In  the  language  of  Schopenhauer,  "  in  this 
act  the  most  decided  assertion  of  the  will  to  live  expresses  it- 
self."    The  general  gratification  of  the  appetite  in  some  form 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  WILL  257 

is  essential  to  the  very  continuance  of  the  human  species. 
"  Therefore  it  is  this  act  through  which  every  species  of  living 
creature  binds  itself  to  the  whole  and  is  perpetuated."  Inas- 
much, however,  as  there  is  an  obvious  connection  between 
this  voluntary  act  and  the  origin  and  perpetuation  of  life, 
that  eternal  and  inscrutable  mystery,  the  exercise  and  the 
control  of  the  function  have  always  been  closely  connected 
with  the  religious  ideas  and  practices  of  mankind.  The 
phallus  was  worshipped  by  the  Greeks ;  the  lingam  is  wor- 
shipped by  the  Hindus  of  to-day.  But  man,  in  this  respect 
as  in  other  respects,  has  much  more  decided  preferences  and 
choices  than  have  the  lower  animals :  and  the  very  physio- 
logical characteristics  of  the  human  offspring  necessitate 
some  at  least  rude  and  inchoate  form  of  the  family.  More- 
over, the  interests  of  society  become  immediately  and  deeply 
involved  in  the  union  of  the  sexes.  Of  necessity  a  community 
of  human  beings  cares  more,  because  it  has  more  varied  and 
vital  interests  involved,  how  its  males  and  females  are  paired 
than  do  flocks  of  birds  or  herds  of  cattle.  But  chiefly  is  it 
because  the  higher,  tenderer,  and  nobler  affections  of  man 
are  most  powerfully  enlisted  in  connection  with  the  exercise 
of  the  sexual  functions  that  their  control  is  of  the  highest 
import,  not  only  as  a  matter  of  social  custom  and  morals, 
but  also  as  a  matter  of  essential  morality. 

It  is  not  strange,  therefore,  that  an  almost  bewildering 
difference  of  conceptions  and  customs  should  characterize  the 
judgments  of  men  as  to  what  constitutes  the  virtue  of  tem- 
perance in  sexual  intercourse.  Even  the  practices  and  the 
sanctions  of  man's  religious  life  throw  little  clear  light  upon 
the  path  of  virtue  in  this  regard.  It  is  plainly  the  will 
of  God  that  the  will  to  live  should  be  satisfied,  by  some 
form  of  uniting  the  sexes.  But  if  man  looks  to  the  various 
forces  and  processes  of  nature  for  guidance,  the  utmost  confu- 
sion of  conceptions  is  the  inevitable  result.  Quite  commonly 
an  important  part  of  nature  worship  is  phallic  worship ;  and 

17 


258  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

when  religious  evolution  has  reached  the  stage  in  which  the 
gods  are  conceived  of  as  persons  similar  to  heroic  and  kingly 
men,  their  example  is  an  encouragement  to  unbridled  lust 
rather  than  to  its  temperate  control.  Such  was  the  case  in 
ancient  Greece  ;  such  is  the  case  in  India  to-day.  Indeed,  in 
the  latter  country  the  British  Government  is  still  compelled 
to  make  an  exception  to  the  laws  prohibiting  obscene  litera- 
ture, in  favor  of  religious  (!)  books ;  and  the  sacred  interests 
of  morality  and  religion  are  continually  pleaded  by  the  most 
orthodox  of  the  Hindus  against  the  attempts  made  by  their 
own  reformers  to  promote  the  increase  of  sexual  temperance 
and  self-restraint.  Nor  does  it  appear,  until  after  a  lengthy, 
complicated,  and  even  conflicting  experience,  what  forms  and 
limits  of  the  control  of  the  sexual  appetite  are  actually 
productive  of  the  best  results.  The  consequences  of  the  im- 
moral indulgence  of  this  appetite  are  often  most  remote  and 
difficult  to  trace.  And  then,  how  irregular  and  fitful  do  these 
consequences  seem  to  be !  Relatively  gross  indulgences  are 
not  infrequently  concealed  or  their  bad  results  lie  latent; 
while  quite  as  frequently  the  least  immoral,  or  even  a  small 
legitimate  indulgence,  is  promptly  followed  by  the  most  appal- 
ling evils. 

Yet  the  other  side  of  this  universal  human  experience  must 
not  be  neglected.  Some  self-control,  a  measure  of  tempering 
for  this  form  of  desire,  is  universally  demanded  of  the  man 
who  will  lay  claim  to  the  title  "good."  For  the  formal 
and  legitimate  union  of  the  sexes  the  barrier  of  some  sort 
of  ceremony  must  in  almost  all  instances  be  passed.  Among 
savages  it  is  a  common  rule  of  etiquette  that  a  proposal 
for  marriage  shall  be  approached  indirectly ;  generally  it 
is  deemed  right  that  the  male  shall  show  his  insistence 
by  pursuing  or  even  violently  carrying  off  his  bride,  and 
that  the  female  shall  show  her  modesty  by  some,  at  least 
pretended,  form  of  coyness  or  resistance.  The  limits  within 
which    marriage  may   lawfully   take  place   are    everywhere 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  WILL  259 

somehow  fixed,  although  the  manner  of  their  adjustment 
varies  indefinitely.  The  Hindu  Kooch  incurs  a  fine  if  he 
marries  a  woman  of  another  clan;  the  Abors  consider 
marriage  out  of  the  clan  as  a  sin  to  be  washed  out  only 
by  sacrifice ;  but  among  the  Thlinkeets  the  young  warrior 
of  the  totem  of  the  Wolf  must  seek  his  bride  among  the 
maidens  of  the  totem  of  the  Raven.  Almost  everywhere 
adultery  on  the  woman's  part,  if  without  consent  of  her  hus- 
band, is  punishable  with  death.  Amongst  the  Germanic 
nations  ''  the  church  has  the  credit  of  forcing  law  and  senti- 
ment to  take  cognizance  of  the  husband's  crime  as  well ! " 
Slowly,  and  more  especially  among  these  same  nations,  the 
standard  of  sexual  virtue  has,  at  least  as  far  as  the  sentiments 
and  open  practices  of  the  majority  are  concerned,  been  rising. 
And  there  are  few  indeed  now  whose  judgment  is  worth  re- 
specting, that  do  not  identify  the  virtue  of  sexual  temperance 
with  monogamic  marriage,  and  with  such  indulgence  of  ap- 
petite in  this  relation  as  is  consistent  with  the  higher  interests 
involved. 

It  appears,  then,  that  the  regulation  of  the  appetite  of  sex  'f 

is  a  species  of  temperance  in  the  larger  meaning  of  this  word. 
It  is,  that  is  to  say,  a  form  of  the  voluntary  control  of  a 
natural  and  legitimate  desire  within  the  limits  rationally 
permissible  in  accord  with  the  pursuit  of  the  ideals  of  a  Virtu- 
ous Life.  These  limits  are  themselves  the  result  of  a  histori- 
cal evolution  which  has  defined  them  more  and  more  clearly, 
and  has  enforced  them  by  more  and  more  powerful  sanctions, 
as  the  gathered  experience  of  the  race  has  yielded  more  light 
upon  the  right  path.  But  prominent  among  the  different 
forms  of  this  experience  is  the  teaching  and  example  of  the 
Christian  Church  and  the  teaching  of  its  founder :  "  Moses 
because  of  the  hardness  of  your  hearts  suffered  you  to  put 
away  your  wives ;  but  from  the  beginning  it  was  not  so."  All 
other  extensions  of  the  limits,  whether  by  way  of  legality  or 
of  custom,  are  thus  declared  to  be  concessive  ;  but  the  divine 


260  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

ideal  for  the  human  species  is  a  pair,  faithful  to  each  other 
and  chastened  by  those  ends  that  have  value  and  are  depend- 
ently  connected  with  the  married  state. 

Another  of  the  historically  more  prominent  forms  of  the 
virtue  of  temperance  is  self-control  over  the  desire  of  posses- 
sion, the  impulse  to  acquire  property.  The  desire  "  to  have 
and  to  hold  "  for  one's  self  all  the  various  forms  of  good  is 
natural  and  universal  with  man ;  it  is  also  indispensable  for 
his  material  evolution  and  for  the  development  of  morality. 
No  form  of  Communism  is  conceivable  —  not  to  say  possible  of 
actualization  —  which  is  not  based  upon  the  desire  of  property 
and  the  distinction  between  the  vicious  and  the  virtuous  ways 
of  gratifying  this  desire.  Therefore  some  measure  of  the  ex- 
ternal habits  of  honesty  is  esteemed  good  conduct  under  all 
conditions  of  human  existence  ;  and  much  as  men  may  differ 
as  to  what  stealing  is,  or  as  to  how  much  and  what  kinds  of 
stealing  are  permissible,  some  formal  regulation  of  the  indivi- 
dual's tendency  to  appropriate  the  goods  of  life  exclusively  to 
himself  is  always  provided  for  by  the  customs  and  laws  of  the 
community.  Even  the  robber  castes  of  India  recognize  this 
virtue  as  reciprocally  obligatory  upon  the  other  members  of 
the  caste.  With  them,  as  with  our  wreckers  of  railroads  and 
other  plunderers  of  the  public,  even  thieves  must  divide  the 
spoils  amongst  themselves  with  some  show  of  honesty ;  and 
if  brought  before  the  standards  of  the  prevailing  moral  con- 
sciousness of  their  own  class,  they  must  show  reason  why 
their  conduct  was  not  essentially  dishonest  after  all. 

Here  again  the  multiform  curious  discrepancies  in  the  preva- 
lent customs  and  opinions  regarding  the  nature  of  the  virtue, 
the  weird  and  strange  ordeals  to  which  suspected  culprits  are 
subjected,  the  startling  differences  in  the  forms  and  degrees 
of  punishment  inflicted  for  crimes  of  dishonesty,  do  not  change 
the  essential  nature  of  the  transaction,  whether  subjectively 
or  objectively  regarded.  Thus  if  "  the  Guinea  Coast  negroes 
thought  it  reasonable  to  punish  rich  persons  guilty  of  robbery 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  WILL  261 

more  severely  than  the  poor,"  they  did  not  necessarily  show 
themselves  less  appreciative  of  the  crime  of  dishonesty  than  do 
the  English  of  to-day,  with  their  theoretical  principle  of  impar- 
tiality before  the  law,  for  all  ranks  and  degrees  of  wealth. 
The  rich,  argued  the  negroes,  deserve  more  punishment,  be- 
cause they  are  not  urged  to  steal  by  necessity,  and  can  better 
spare  the  fines  of  money  laid  on  them.  "  The  thief  catches 
himself,"  and  "  Stolen  goods  do  not  make  one  grow,"  say  the 
Basutos  of  South  Africa. 

But  the  virtue  of  self-control  over  the  desire  of  possession 
is  not  confined  to  matters  of  property  in  the  narrower  mean- 
ing of  this  word.     Among  the  less  civilized,  the  wives  of  any 
man  are,  of  course,  regarded  as  his  rightful  possession ;  and 
the  crime  of  adultery  is  punished  not  so  much  —  or  not  at  all 
—  as  an  impurity,  but  rather  as  an  act  of  robbery  of  that 
which  belongs  to  another  by  right.     So  also  to  take  another's 
picture,  or  to  use  his  name,  seems  to  many  savages  a  similar 
sort  of  crime.     To  gain  power  over  others  by  witchcraft  or 
incantations  and  so  to  rob  them  of  self-control  or  of  the  dues 
of  service  may  also  be  regarded  in  nearly  the  same  way.     In 
our  complicated  modern  life,  where  the  "  possessions  "  of  man 
have  became  so  much  increased  in  number  and  magnitude, 
the  various  concrete  forms  of  virtuous  control  over  the  desire 
for  that  which  is  not  one's  own,  have  themselves  greatly  in- 
creased.    But  the  virtuousness  of  the  virtue  remains  always 
the   same.     And  the  viciousness  of  the  vice,  too,  —  this  is 
essentially  identical  in  all  times  and  under  all  circumstances  ; 
it  is  the  gratification  of  the  lust  of  possession  without  regard 
to  the  moral  ideals.     When,  as,  alas  !  so  often  happens  in 
modern  times  amongst  the  most  highly  civilized  nations  — 
"  civilized,"  that  is  to  say,  in  the  interests  of  commercialism 
and  for  the  purpose  largely  of  protecting  the  property  rights 
of  the  individual  and  of  the  community  —  this  lust  can  be 
gratified  under  the  protection  of  the  laws,  it  may  become 
legalized  and  respected  indeed,  but  it  is  no  less  essentially 


262  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

immoral  until  it  submits  itself  loyally  and  completely  to  the 
demands  of  moral  principle.  The  custom  and  the  law  do 
indeed  assist  in  defining  the  limits  of  a  virtuous  self-control. 
But  if  the  self-control  is  not  really  exercised  in  the  interests 
of  the  ideal  of  a  virtuous  life,  compliance  with  custom  and 
law  is  not  morality.  Indeed  the  custom  and  the  law  may 
combine  to  encourage  this  vice.  For  a  time  —  but  only  for  a 
time  —  the  custom  itself  may  be  a  species  of  robbery  ;  and  the 
laws  may  be  enacted  in  the  interests  of  robbers. 

Many  other  forms  of  the  virtue  of  temperance  than  these 
three  might  be  mentioned  and  shown  to  be  important  parts  of 
the  Virtuous  Life.  For  example,  the  rational  self-control  of  the 
natural  emotion  of  pride  is  the  distinctively  Christian  virtue 
of  Humility.  But  this  virtue  has  been  much  misunderstood, 
—  not  only  by  the  ancients,  who  found  difficulty  in  detaching 
it  from  the  suspicion  of  a  certain  baseness  of  spirit,  but  also 
by  many  modern  writers.  The  genuine  virtue  of  humility 
consists  in  the  rational  self-control  of  pride,  primarily  before 
God  and  chiefly  with  reference  to  one's  own  attainments  and 
merits  as  measured  by  the  standards  of  a  perfect  Moral  Ideal. 
But  before  men,  and  in  the  face  of  every  attempt  to  bribe 
or  to  threaten  the  soul  away  from  devotion  to  its  supreme 
spiritual  interests,  genuine  humility  is  closely  akin  to,  if  not 
identical  with,  a  certain  noble  haughtiness,  or  at  least  quiet 
self-reserve.  And  this  is  a  virtue  which,  although  distinct- 
ively Christian  in  the  sense  that  it  is  a  cardinal  thing  with 
the  spirit  of  the  true  believer  and  was  especially  enjoined  and 
needed  in  the  early  times  of  the  Christian  faith,  has  always 
and  everywhere  been  recognized  by  the  most  thoughtful  stu- 
dents of  ethics.  It  is  true  that  humility  cannot  easily  flourish 
amongst  those  savage  tribes  whose  successful  struggle  for  ex- 
istence depends  upon  the  practice  of  the  tougher  and  more 
strenuous  virtues.  But,  as  I  have  just  said,  humility  is  not 
essentially  inconsistent  with  courage  ;  in  the  long  run,  and  in 
its  more  intelligent  and  refined  forms,  it  is  often  the  twin  of 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  WILL  263 

courage  in  the  successful  struggle  for  the  higher  life.  "  Blessed 
are  the  meek :  for  they  shall  inherit  the  earth."  When,  where, 
and  how  ?  these  are  questions  which  it  will  take  a  long  time 
for  the  race  to  answer  in  a  practical  way.  Still,  even  amongst 
the  OjiSy  one  may  find  such  a  suggestion  as  gleams  through 
the  proverb :  "  If  you  can  pull  out,  pull  out  your  own  gray 
hairs."  In  happier  circumstances  the  moral  truth  lias  been 
more  reflectively  and  fully  expressed  in  such  wise  sayings  as 
follow :  "  As  the  tulip  that  is  gaudy  without  smell,  conspicuous 
without  use,  so  is  the  man  who  setteth  himself  on  high,  and 
hath  not  merit."  "  Wherein  art  thou  most  weak  ?  In  that 
wherein  thou  seemest  most  strong ;  in  that  wherein  most  thou 
gloriest ;  even  in  possessing  the  things  which  thou  hast ;  in 
using  the  good  that  is  about  thee."  ^  Or,  as  the  sacred  saying 
of  the  Vaisnava  Dharma  is :  "  That  man  truly  pronounces 
the  name  of  tlie  Loving  Lord,  who  is  in  fortitude  like  the 
trunk  of  a  tree,  and  in  humility  like  a  blade  of  grass." 

Temperance  in  eating  and  drinking  are,  to  a  certain  extent, 
enforced  upon  those  tribes  and  communities  whose  conditions 
of  living  are  most  nearly  primitive.  With  them  the  meagre 
and  fitful  supply  of  food  confines  the  vice  of  gluttony  within 
narrow  limits ;  and  the  vice  of  drunkenness  is  also  likely  to 
be  spasmodic  rather  than  habitual.  It  is  scarcely  to  the 
credit  of  any  claim  to  superiority  in  rational  self-control  of 
these  appetites,  on  the  part  of  the  most  civilized  peoples,  that 
they  have  come  to  limit  the  popular  meaning  of  the  word 
temperance  to  the  self-control,  or  the  enforced  external  con- 
trol, of  the  appetite  for  drink.  The  history  of  the  matter 
shows  that  habitual  over-feeding  and  improper  drinking  are 
more  particularly  the  vices  of  a  civilization  where  luxury  and 
w^ant  exist  side  by  side  in  extreme  forms,  or  where  some 
hardy  race  seeks  relief  in  these  ways  from  the  monotony  or 

1  Taken  from  a  book  called  "  The  Economy  of  Life  "  and  purporting  to  be 
translated  from  an  ancient  manuscript  discovered  in  Thibet  and  written  by  a 
Biahman. 


264  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

the  severitj  of  the  conditions  imposed  upon  it  by  its  envi- 
ronment. The  opposed  virtues  can  never  be  widely  and 
successfully  cultivated  except  as  the  result  of  a  more  in- 
telligent self-control  under  the  influence  of  an  exalted  moral 
ideal. 

That  other  Yirtue  of  the  Will  which  I  have  called  Con- 
stancy is  yet  more  cardinal  —  were  this  possible  —  than  are 
the  virtues  of  courage  and  temperance.  By  constancy  I 
understand  that  intelligent  and  steady  habitual  action  of  the 
will  which  follows  in  strong  characters  the  commitment  of 
the  whole  self  to  the  pursuit  of  a  deliberately  chosen  end  of 
good.  "Consistency,"  says  Lotze,^  "is  demanded  in  con- 
duct :  only  that  which  flows  from  such  a  constant  character 
—  rather  than  inconsequent  ebullitions  of  fine  feeling — ex- 
periences our  moral  approbation."  "  We  demand  that  every 
single  action  be  not  at  all  times  dependent  on  a  hazardous 
struggle  between  character  and  the  impulse  of  the  moment. 
Bather  does  the  moral  habit,  which  makes  the  correct  con- 
duct seem  like  a  second  nature,  appear  to  us  a  much  higher 
ideal  of  morality  and  as  somewhat  toward  which,  among  other 
things,  education  has  to  strive."  The  virtues,  according  to 
Aristotle,^  are  all  "  habits  or  trained  faculties."  Constancy, 
then,  is  the  essential  of  every  virtuous  character,  in  so  far  as 
virtue  is  a  matter  of  will.  It  is  that  interpenetrating  and 
all-suffusing  quality  of  moral  selfhood  which  every  form  of  the 
so-called  virtues  must  have,  in  order  to  the  realization  of  any 
even  imperfect  ideal  of  the  Virtuous  Life.  In  chosen  courses 
of  conduct  it  secures  uniformity  and  dependableness  ;  in  the 
service  of  one's  superiors,  of  one's  country,  or  of  humanity,  it 
manifests  itself  as  faithful  obedience ;  in  matters  of  sentiment 
and  of  behavior  towards  others,  it  is  the  much -prized  char- 
acteristic of  loyalty ;  in  devotion  to  the  rational  life,  it  is  the 
very  bone  of  veracity.     On  the  contrary,  every  virtue  is  either 

1  Outlines  of  Practical  Philosophy,  p.  30  f . 

2  Nic.  Eth.,  II,  passim. 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  WILL  265 

ftiarred  or  spoiled  by  the  vice  of  fickleness  and  inconstancy. 
Of  Reuben,  said  Israel,  —  though  he  was  his  firstborn,  his 
might,  "  the  beginning  of  strength,  the  excellency  of  dignity, 
and  the  excellency  of  power  "  :  "  Unstable  as  water,  thou  shalt 
not  excelP  Steadfastness  of  purpose  is,  psychologically  con- 
sidered, the  one  indispensable  condition  of  virtuous  character, 
the  very  core  of  right  and  dutiful  manhood.  It  is  justly 
admired  under  all  circumstances,  and  in  every  stage  of  moral 
development.  Even  bad  men  are  given  for  this  type  of  char- 
acter a  credit  and  an  admiration  which  are  not  merely  assthet- 
ical  but  are  also  ethical.  And  the  verdict  of  the  populace,  as 
well  as  of  all  writers  on  ethics,  accords  with  the  declaration 
of  Scripture  (Jas.  i.  7  f.)  :  "  A  double-minded  man  is  unstable 
in  all  his  ways."  And  "  let  not  that  man  think  that  he  shall 
receive  anything  of  the  Lord." 

It  is  scarcely  necessary,  however,  to  call  attention  at  length 
to  the  danger  of  mistaking  the  psychological  nature  of  this 
virtue  of  the  will.  Constancy  is  certainly  not  to  be  con- 
founded with  obstinacy,  or  with  "  blind  will  "  (provided  even 
that  we  admit  the  propriety  of  any  such  term  as  hlind  will). 
Indeed,  although  constancy  in  any  particular  course  of  con- 
duct may  easily  enough  be  accused  of  obstinacy  by  the  oppo- 
nents of  this  course,  the  two  are  so  different  that  obstinacy 
cannot  even  properly  be  regarded  as  the  shamming  of  con- 
stancy. The  man  who  will  not  hear  to  reason  is  unwise,  the 
man  who  prefers  to  listen  and  commit  himself  to  the  inferior 
good  is  morally  foolish.  Such  refusal  is  the  essence  of 
obstinacy,  and  is  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  virtue  of 
constancy  even  when  this  virtue,  like  all  the  other  qualified 
virtues,  is  enlisted  in  a  bad  cause.  Neither  can  persistence 
in  an  evil  course  of  conduct  convert  that  conduct  from  the 
one  ethical  category  of  "  bad  "  into  the  other  of  "  good  "  con- 
duct. None  the  less,  however,  is  constancy  always  a  genuine 
virtue  of  the  will.  The  solution  of  such  a  seeming  paradox 
is  to  be  reached  in  the  following  way :  Particular  pieces  of 


266  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

conduct  or  aspects  of  character  are  called  good  or  bad,  ethi- 
cally, according  as  they  do,  or  do  not,  correspond  to  the 
Moral  Ideal.  Repetition  of  these  acts  constitutes,  therefore, 
either  a  good  character  and  a  virtuous  life  or  a  bad  character 
and  a  vicious  life.  For  the  principle  of  habit  is  fundamental 
in  the  growth  of  character,  and  the  laws  of  development  ex- 
tend over  the  entire  life.  He,  then,  who  at  any  time  shows 
that  power  of  will  which  induces  a  change  from  a  bad  to  a 
good  course  of  conduct  makes  the  kind  of  a  choice  which  is 
a  highly  important  initial  step  in  the  path  of  all  virtuous  liv- 
ing. But  constancy  of  will  is  essential  to  the  fuller  realiza- 
tion of  this  life.  He  who  has  hitherto  been  bad,  because  he  has 
applied  this  essential  characteristic  of  the  virtues  to  vicious 
ends  in  vicious  ways,  is  the  more  sure  thereby  of  a  success- 
ful issue  when  he  changes  his  conduct  to  the  pursuit  of  the 
higher  ideals.  Steadiness  of  purpose,  although  attained  and 
exercised  in  vicious  ways,  when  converted,  gives  more  assur- 
ance of  success  than  do  tlie  fitful  yieldings  of  the  fickle  man  to 
the  demands  and  persuasions  of  a  disapproving  conscience, 
even  if  continued  through  the  whole  life. 

In  all  moral  concernment,  however.  Habit  is  powerful  over 
all;  the  bad  man  will  necessarily  become  the  weaker  in  re- 
spect of  the  possibility  of  changing  to  virtuous  courses,  and 
hardened  in  his  commitment  to  vicious  courses.  But  how- 
ever it  needs  to  be  "  qualified  "  by  all  these  considerations, 
steadfastness  of  purpose,  planful  and  constant  self-control, 
remains  a  cardinal  virtue  of  will. 

There  are  several  particular  subordinate  phases  or  complex 
combinations  of  these  cardinal  Virtues  of  the  Will  which  are 
themselves  recognized  as  separate  virtues,  in  some  sort  within 
the  scheme  approved  by  the  moral  judgment  of  mankind. 
Such  are  patience,  endurance,  sobriety,  industry,  perseverance, 
etc.  The  exercise  of  all  these  virtues  makes  draughts  upon 
the  power  of  self-control  under  the  hard  circumstances,  or  in 
the  presence  of  the  seductions  and  temptations  which  every- 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  WILL  267 

where  and  inevitably  belong  to  human  life.  The  patient, 
enduring,  and  persevering  man  must  have  a  steady,  temper- 
ate, and  courageous  self-control.  The  industry  and  sobriety 
which  are  chosen  in  the  interest  of  the  legitimate  ends  of  life, 
and  which  bring  satisfaction  to  the  moral  consciousness,  are 
therefore  entitled  to  be  considered  virtuous  forms  of  self- 
control  ;  for  the  temptations  to  laziness,  impatience,  and  self- 
indulgence  are  pervasive  and  strong.  But  there  are  relatively 
narrow  limits  to  all  these  subordinate  virtues :  there  are  wrongs 
before  which  patience  is  not  the  cardinal  virtue ;  insults  and 
attacks  that  ought  not  to  be  endured ;  innocent  mistakes  in 
chosen  courses  of  conduct  in  which  one  ought  not  to  per- 
severe. There  are  also  ethical  as  well  as  physical  limitations 
to  industry ;  and  recreation  and  play  may  become  imperative 
duties.  Neither  can  it  be  said  that  the  good  man  will  be 
always  "sober,"  unless  a  very  generous  interpretation  be 
given  to  the  word.  If  it  be  not  true,  as  Aristotle  taught, 
that  a  "  refined  and  gentlemanly  wittiness  "  is  itself  a  virtue, 
it  is  certainly  permissible  to  be  witty  in  consistency  with  the 
limitations  set  by  other  forms  of  virtuous  conduct.  And  per- 
haps one  may  fitly  end  such  a  discussion  by  saying,  as  does 
Orsino  in  Crawford's  Corleone :  "  I  believe  that  the  chief  real 
wickedness  is  in  doing  nothing  at  all ; "  or,  "  Sloth  is  one  of 
the  capital  sins,"  as  Yittoria  observed,  who  knew  the  names 
of  all  seven. 

When  all  these  virtues  of  the  will  are  combined  in  good 
proportion  and  fair  mixture  in  one  person,  and  that  person  is 
in  their  exercise  fully  committed  through  a  long  life  to  the 
realization  of  lofty  and  morally  worthy  ideals,  we  behold  a 
character  which  the  cultured  moral  consciousness  approbates 
and  thinks  most  worthy  of  reward.  This  is  also  the  character 
which,  under  the  conditions  of  human  life  is  likeliest  to 
succeed  in  doing  the  work  of  life.  A  loyal  and  a  royal  man, 
—  brave,  temperate,  constant,  and  with  an  unchanging 
courage  and  moderation  of  his  own  desires  committed  to  his 


268  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

highest  ideals,  —  a  faithful  soul ;  such  is  he  whom  others 
esteem  to  be,  so  far  as  will  can  make  one,  the  man  of  the 
virtuous  life.     He  it  is  of  whom  they  say : 

*'  Languor  is  not  in  your  heart, 
Weakness  is  not  in  your  word, 
Weariness  not  on  your  brow.' ' 


CHAPTER  XII 

VIRTUES  OF  THE  JUDGMENT :  WISDOM,  JUSTNESS,  ETC. 

The  considerations  which  justify  and  explain  the  title  of 
this  chapter  have  already  been  presented  with  considerable 
detail.  They  show  that  certain  kinds  of  conduct  which  men 
agree  to  call  good,  and  which  are  indeed  essential  character- 
istic forms  of  the  Virtuous  Life,  depend  upon  the  culture  and 
use  of  the  judging  faculty.  It  will  be  well,  however,  before 
proceeding  to  determine  what  these  forms  are,  and  how  it  is 
that  intelligence  takes  its  place  as  an  essential  element  in  all 
moral  goodness,  to  subject  some  of  the  most  important  of 
these  considerations  to  a  brief  restatement.  I  shall  do  this, 
emphasizing  the  following  four  points  :  — 

First :  Judgment  about  matters  of  conduct  is  itself  a  species 
of  conduct.  And  inasmuch  as  most  judgments  have  some 
either  direct  or  remote  reference  to  conduct,  most  judgments 
are  liable  at  any  moment  in  human  experience  to  be  brought 
under  the  rubric  of  conduct.  By  a  man  of  "  good  judg- 
ment," then,  is  fitly  meant  what  the  popular  speech  usually 
means,  viz.,  one  who  uses  his  judging  faculty  in  a  morally 
worthy  way. 

Second:  In  all  the  language  and  usages  of  men  which 
have  a  bearing  upon  this  subject,  this  true  and  profound 
psychology  of  the  judgment  is  implied.  Judging  is  not  con- 
ceived of  as  a  mere  getting  together,  much  less  as  a  mere 
sequence,  under  the  laws  of  association,  of  memory-images  or 
products  of  the  phantasy.  Neither  is  judgment  regarded  by 
men  generally  as  a  merely  formal  and,  as  it  were,  passive 


270  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

collocation  or  connection  of  conceptions  or  of  so-called 
abstract  ideas,  /judge  ;  and  this  has  reference  to  a  voluntary 
and  synthetic  activity.  The  judgment  is  mine,  as  belonging 
to  an  active  Self.  The  ideas  or  conceptions,  which  logic 
regards  as  somehow  being  together^  the  language  of  men  agrees 
with  a  vital  psychology  as  regarding  under  terms  of  a  connec- 
tion effected  by  a  living  Will.  What  wonder,  then,  that  the 
inclination  of  mankind  is  strong  to  hold — each  one,  the  other 
—  responsible  for  his  judgment.  The  exhortation,  then,  to 
take  heed  how  one  judges  is  deserving  of  regard,  not  simply 
on  prudential  but  also  on  more  distinctively  ethical  grounds. 

Third :  The  part  which  judgment  takes  in  the  conduct  of 
the  Virtuous  Life  is  integral  and  essential.  Judging  well  is 
not  simply  preliminary  to  virtue,  or  merely  accessory  to  good 
conduct ;  neither  is  the  part  of  judgment  in  morality  fully 
discharged  ex  post  facto,  as  it  were,  when  the  virtuous  or 
vicious  act  comes  before  the  bar  of  the  intellect  to  have  its 
moral  quality  estimated.  Intellect  judges  conduct ;  how  and 
why  it  judges  at  all,  and  judges  as  it  actually  does,  has  already 
been  made  clear  in  the  discussion  of  the  origin  and  nature 
of  ethical  judgment.  Plato  was,  indeed,  wrong  when  he  went 
so  far  as  to  make  virtue  always  coincident  with  knowledge  ; 
it  contradicts  the  facts  of  experience  to  hold  that  men  do 
wrong  only  because  they  do  not  know  the  beauty  and  the  real 
worth  of  the  higher  good.  Neither  as  accordant  with  facts, 
nor  as  tenable  theory  of  the  riglit  and  wrong  in  conduct,  is  it 
true  that  "  all  men  are  always  invohmtarily  bad."  ^  It  is  not 
even  true  that  the  cardinal  virtues  of  judgment  —  as,  for 
example,  Wisdom  —  are  wholly  identical  with  "  thought  on 
moral  subjects  "  {(j)p6v7}cn<;).  Feeling  and  will  enter  into  every 
species  of  conduct ;  and  without  these  aspects  of  the  moral  self 
participating  no  virtue  is  possible.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
the  same  thing  is  true  of  intellect.     In  its  supreme  function- 

1  Laws,  p.  860  C  ;  and  on  the  Ethics  of  Plato  see  Sir  A.  Grant :  The  Ethics  of 
Aristotle,  I,  essay  III,  and  Thos.  Maguire,  Essays  on  the  Platonic  Ethics. 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  JUDGMENT  271 

ing  by  way  of  judgment,  it  is  necessarily  a  participant  in  every 
virtuous  or  vicious  act.  What  is  done  blindly  —  wholly 
blindly — loses  all  the  characteristics,  both  intellectual  and 
voluntary,  of  a  genuine  piece  of  conduct.  What  is  done 
deliberately  is  more  particularly  ethical  in  its  characteristics ; 
but  deliberation  is  itself  a  voluntary  exercise  of  the  judging 
faculty.  What  is  done  with  the  whole  Self — this  it  is  which 
bears  to  the  fullest  possible  extent,  the  stamp  of  the  coin  that 
is  either  genuine  or  counterfeit  in  the  kingdom  where  right  and 
wrong  doing  are  matters  of  the  supreme  value.  Voluntary 
judgment,  feeling  motive,  deliberate  choice,  —  thus  the  entire 
unitary  being  of  the  Moral  Self  commits  itself  to  the  conse- 
quences, internal  and  external,  subjective  and  objective,  of 
what  is  the  expression  of  its  own  deepest  life. 

Fourth :  But  while  all  virtues  involve  intellect,  feeling,  and 
will,  and  some  virtues  are  chiefly  of  the  will,  some  other 
virtues  may  properly  bear  the  title  "  virtues  of  the  judgment." 
Wherever  the  relation  which  the  judging  function  bears  to 
truth  and  reality  is  the  prominent  characteristic  of  the  good 
or  bad  conduct,  there  the  virtue  or  the  vice  may  properly  be 
spoken  of  in  this  way.  It  must  be  remembered,  however, 
that  we  are  treating  of  real  virtues  and  not  of  their  appear- 
ances or  of  the  opposite  vices  which  so  often  are  the  shams  of 
the  real  virtues.  For  just  as  seeming  courage  may  often 
result  from  real  cowardice  or  from  insensibility  to  some 
particular  kind  of  fear,  so  seeming  wisdom  may  be  due  to 
real  timidity  or  to  a  selfish  reserve  of  one's  strength,  or  to 
neglect  of  one's  opportunities.  Just  as  temperance  may  be 
only  the  expression  of  another  form  of  uncontrolled  desire 
(like  the  miser's  abstinence  fi'om  food  and  drink),  so  what 
men  call  justice  is  not  uncommonly  the  expression  of  merely 
prudential  or  positively  selfish  impulses. 

The  Virtues  of  Judgment,  then,  are  those  forms  of  con- 
duct whose  goodness  or  badness,  in  the  ethical  meaning  of 
these  words,  depends  chiefly  upon  the  character  of  the  judg- 


272  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

ing  function  which  enters  into  them.  Of  such  virtues  the 
following  three  are  most  cardinal  and  comprehensive ;  — 
namely,  Wisdom,  Justness,  and  a  certain  other  form  of  good 
judgment  which  I  will  call,  Trueness. 

Wisdom  as  a  virtue  is  moral,  and  therefore  voluntary, 
judgment  having  reference  to  the  ends  of  life,  and  to  the 
means  of  attaining  these  ends.  It  is  the  Moral  Self  exercis- 
ing its  power  of  judgment  in  conduct  regarded  as  the  pursuit 
of  some  form  of  good.  The  virtue  may  either  terminate  in 
the  act  of  judging,  or  it  may  require  for  its  completion  and 
manifestation  some  further  motor  elements.  Indeed,  since 
wisdom  is  essentially  a  judgment  with  reference  to  conduct, 
there  is  usually  something  to  be  done  by  somebody  in  order 
that  the  virtue  may  not  spend  itself  in  mere  judgment  as  it 
were.  When  the  action  which  is  necessary  to  realize  the 
wise  conclusion  devolves  upon  the  very  same  person  who  has 
reached  the  conclusion,  the  failure  to  act  certainly  detracts 
from  the  popular  estimate  of  the  original  virtue.  Indeed, 
those  who  are  wise  to  counsel  others  to  virtuous  conduct,  but 
who  do  not  conduct  themselves  in  accordance  with  their  own 
wise  counsels,  are  apt  to  be  esteemed  bad,  rather  than  good 
men.  Here,  however,  as  usual,  what  is  needed  in  order  to 
understand  the  psychological  nature  of  this  virtue  is  a  more 
discriminating  analysis.  To  adjudicate  wisely  the  value  of 
ends,  and  the  means  of  attaining  ends  that  have  value,  is  a 
virtue  —  not  merely  an  intellectual  excellence,  but  a  species 
of  morally  right  conduct.  But  habitually  to  disregard  in 
thought  the  ideal  ends  of  life  may  not  improperly  be  said  to 
be  essentially  vicious.  "  Frivolity,"  says  Humboldt,  "  under- 
mines all  morality  and  permits  no  deep  thought  or  pure 
feeling  to  germinate ;  in  a  frivolous  soul  nothing  can  emanate 
from  principle,  and  sacrifice  and  self-conquest  are  out  of  the 
question." 

To  act  in  accordance  with  wise  judgment  usually  requires 
courage,  temperance,  constancy,  and  all  the  other  virtues  of 


VIETUES  OP  THE  JUDGMENT  273 

the  will.  To  be  lacking  in  these  is  to  be  not  virtuous ;  it  is 
to  be,  on  the  contrary,  guilty  of  certain  vices  that  are  them- 
selves contrary  to,  and  destructive  of,  the  higher  wisdom. 
Moreover,  that  principle  of  moral  development  must  be  reck- 
oned with  which  makes  the  habitual  failure  to  do  what  judg- 
ment dictates  ought  to  be  done,  react  upon  the  judging 
faculty  so  as  to  render  it  obscure  and  blind.  For  the  mind,  in 
conduct  and  in  the  development  of  character,  is  such  a  unity 
of  interdependent  functions,  that  its  vicious  or  defective 
working  in  any  one  important  respect  makes  itself  felt  in  all 
respects.  For  example,  if  courage  should  be  wise,  wisdom 
should  be  courageous,  in  order  that  both  may  be  at  their  best. 

The  most  important  respects  in  which  the  virtue  of  wisdom 
needs  to  be  exercised  are  three  in  number :  (1)  the  evaluation 
of  ends,  with  a  view  to  determine  their  relative  worth  ;  (2) 
the  estimate  of  means,  with  a  view  to  determine  their  effective- 
ness (often  relative  also)  for  the  realization  of  ends;  and 
(3)  the  appreciation  of  those  limitations  which  concern  both 
the  ends  and  the  means,  but  which  belong  to  the  natural  and 
social  environment  of  man.  Wisdom  in  the  evaluation  of 
ends  is  sometimes  called  the  "  higher  "  wisdom  ;  in  the  esti- 
mate of  means  the  same  virtue  may  be  considered  as  a  practi- 
cal wisdom,  the  quality  which  belongs  to  the  deliberate 
judgments  of  the  expert.  But  a  due  appreciation  of  the  limita- 
tions of  life  is  the  intellectual  essential  of  that  rare  and  holy 
complex  of  virtues  which  may  fitly  be  called  a  wise  Resigna- 
tion. I  shall  consider  briefly  these  three  forms  of  exhibiting 
the  virtue  of  wisdom. 

In  each  of  these  three  forms  of  wisdom  one  may  discover 
what  is  the  essential  difference  between  knowledge  and  wis- 
dom. Knowledge,  too,  culminates  in  that  activity  which  is 
the  supreme  expression  of  man's  intelligence,  —  namely,  in 
the  judgment.  But  wisdom  always  implies  an  estimate  of 
some  kind  of  value  ;  and  the  judgment  into  which  the  quality 
of  the  virtue  enters  has  reference  to  something  conceived  of 

18 


274  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

as  dependent  —  in  some  way  and  to  some  extent  —  upon  per- 
sonal will.  If  nothing  which  comes  into  our  human  lives  had 
worth  in  human  estimates,  there  could  be  no  virtuous  judg- 
ment, no  wise  man  ;  and  even  when  men  discuss  the  wisdom 
of  a  constitution  of  the  universe  over  which  human  wills  have 
no  control,  the  very  problem  —  Is  this  constitution  of  the 
universe  wise  or  not  ?  —  implies  the  conception  that  It  is 
dependent  upon  the  Absolute  Will. 

The  highest  conceivable  manifestation  of  wisdom  consists 
in  the  right,  because  rational,  evaluation  of  those  ends  of  life 
which  can  be,  at  least  partially  and  approximately,  reached  by 
courses  of  human  conduct.  We  have  already  seen  (Chap.  Ill) 
that  men  recognize  different  goods  to  be  pursued ;  and  that 
these  goods  are  recognized  as  not  only  differing  in  degrees 
within  themselves  but  also  as  differing  between  themselves  in 
kind.  The  good  which  morality  exalts  is  the  Moral  Self  real- 
izing its  ends  in  the  Virtuous  Life.  When,  then,  any  problem 
arises  concerning  the  end  toward  which  it  is  wise  to  direct 
one's  energies,  this  general  principle  will  always  be  given  the 
chief  place :  it  is  always  true  wisdom  devotedly  and  unswerv- 
ingly to  follow  the  ideal  of  the  virtuous  life.  It  is  true  wisdom 
always  to  set  the  problem  of  conduct  before  one  in  the  following 
way :  what  is  right  and  best  (as  having  most  moral  value)  to  be 
done  ?  The  problem  being  proposed  in  this  form,  the  syllog- 
ism along  which  the  wise  man's  intelligence  proceeds  to  the 
judgment,  may  be  naively  expressed  thus  :  major  premise  —  It 
is  always  wise  to  do  what  is  right ;  minor  premise  —  This  is 
right ;  conclusion  —  Therefore  this  is  wise.  Certainly,  like  all 
other  general  principles  and  like  all  the  devices  of  a  so-called 
"  pure  "  logic  to  advise  men  what  conclusions  they  shall  arrive 
at,  this  syllogism  settles  nothing  as  to  what  is  right,  and 
therefore  nothing  as  to  what  is  wise.  But  it  describes  the  atti- 
tude toward  his  ideal  of  a  virtuous  life  in  which  every  man  per- 
sistently and  intelligently  stands,  who  is  truly  wise.  This 
attitude  of  soul  is  itself  a  virtue  of  the  highest  degree  of 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  JUDGMENT  275 

excellence.  It  succeeds,  when  perfect,  in  making  the  higher 
wisdom  appear  coextensive  with  the  entire  rational  content 
of  virtue. 

Nor  can  it  be  claimed  that  this  relatively  abstract  form  of 
the  virtue  of  wisdom  is  of  little  or  no  practical  value.  Ques- 
tions as  to  what  conduct  is  wise,  what  not,  are  often  compli- 
cated enough.  Many  such  questions  can  never  be  solved  by 
a  judgment  which  is  quite  clear  and  self-confident ;  and  the 
entirely  clear  and  wholly  self-confident  judgment  of  one  man 
will  not  infrequently  be  exactly  the  opposite  of  that  of  another 
equally  trustworthy  judge.  God  pity  us  all  if  we  are  habitually 
tempted  to  think  our  wisdom  of  the  highest  and  most  com- 
plete !  None  the  less,  for  the  man  who  is  in  process  of  that 
discipline  which  alone  can  give  the  conquest  of  the  Virtuous 
Life,  the  supreme  obligation  is  to  choose  the  end  that  seems  to 
him  to  have  the  highest  worth,  to  remain  unswervingly  faith- 
ful to  it,  and  so  to  be  wise,  —  however  many  faults  of  judgment 
he  may  commit  in  his  decisions  about  the  means  of  realizing 
this  end.  Neither  is  it  true  that  such  wisdom  is  not  defin- 
itively practical.  For  in  the  majority  of  instances  men  know 
well  enough  how  to  supply  the  middle  term  and  so  to  form  the 
minor  premise.  They  know  what  is  right.  But  they  think 
to  be  wise  enough  to  make  what  they  know  is  not  right  serve 
fairly  well  in  the  place  of  the  right.  To  do  this  habitually  is 
to  be  really  unwise ;  it  may  in  the  end  amount  to  the  rankest 
and  most  mischievous  folly. 

The  ends  of  truly  virtuous  living  are  themselves  manifold 
and  admit  of  being  arranged  in  some  sort  of  a  scale  of  values. 
Hence  many  complicated  and  perplexing  problems  arise  with 
respect  to  the  subordination  of  these  ends.  To  be  always  just 
is  one  such  end ;  to  be  always  kind  is  another.  To  make 
others  happy  is  a  virtuous  thing  to  choose  ;  but  to  make  others 
strong  to  resist  temptation  and  able  to  figlit  manfully  the  bat- 
tle of  life  is  certainly  no  less  virtuous.  Which  of  the  various 
ends  it  is  wise  to  emphasize  most,  whether  habitually  or  on 


2T6  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

any  particular  occasion,  demands  some  special  wisdom  of 
judgment ;  and  no  so-called  moralist  can  give  rules  which  will 
dispense  with  the  patient  mastery  of  the  details  that  belong 
to  the  preparation  for  wise  judgment.  Hence,  the  higher  wis- 
dom is  the  steadfast  attitude  of  one's  moral  self,  as  a  judge, 
toward  one's  moral  ideals. 

Practical  wisdom  as  a  virtue,  in  the  narrower  meaning  of 
the  phrase,  has  reference  chiefly  to  judgments  concerning  the 
right  means  to  be  employed  in  attaining  the  ends  of  life. 
But  these  means  are  far  more  complicated  and  intricate  than 
are  the  ends  themselves.  Furthermore,  so  far  as  they  are 
the  objects  of  the  wise  man's  judgment,  the  employment  of 
them  is  a  matter  of  conduct.  In  not  a  few  instances,  too, 
certain  means  involve  action  which  is  prejudicial  to  some 
form  of  good,  or  even  destructive  to  the  securing,  by  others,  of 
the  things  on  which  they  have  set  their  hearts.  Hence  the 
questions.  What  means  shall  be  selected  ?  and  How  far  shall 
the  particular  means  once  chosen  be  pushed  forward  against 
the  wishes  or  the  rights  of  others  ?  become  exceedingly  dif- 
ficult ethical  problems.  The  solution  of  such  problems  of 
conduct  requires  the  application  of  a  large  and  varied 
stock  of  knowledge  in  the  form  of  wise  judgments.  For 
moral  judgment  about  appropriate  means  for  the  realizing  of 
one's  chosen  plans  has  to  consider  —  not  simply  what  means 
are  hest,  because  likeliest  to  bring  about  the  desired  result,  but 
also  what  means  are  permissible  in  accordance  with  the  prin- 
ciples of  a  virtuous  life.  The  good  man  may  not  realize  all 
his  chosen  ends  by  the  use  of  any  kind  of  instrumentality. 
This  would  not  be  wise,  with  the  wisdom  of  virtue,  although 
it  might  be  shrewd,  masterful,  and  successful. 

More  and  more,  as  the  experience  of  the  individual  accu- 
mulates and  the  scientific  knowledge  of  the  race  gives  to  it 
increased  mastery  over  the  resources  of  nature  and  over 
the  gathered  results  of  past  discoveries  and  achievements, 
do  problems  of  the  use  of  means  demand  special  and  expert 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  JUDGMENT  277 

information.  At  the  same  time,  many  means  for  achieving 
desirable  results  which  were  wholly  lacking  in  past  times,  are 
now  ready  at  hand  for  general  use.  It  is  the  part  of  wisdom 
to  know  what  these  means  are,  and  to  know  how  to  use  them. 
One  can  heartily  sympathize  then  with  the  indignation  which 
I  have,  in  a  clinic,  heard  a  surgeon  pour  upon  the  parents  of 
a  boy  allowed  to  grow  up  with  an  unstraightened  spine  or  an 
uncorrected  club-foot.  He  who,  when  important  human  in- 
terests are  involved,  will  take  no  pains  to  know  what  course 
of  conduct  to  pursue,  or,  in  case  he  cannot  himself  judge  fitly 
of  the  means,  will  not  even  try  to  know  who  the  judges  are, 
is  foolish  in  an  immoral  way.  In  modern  life,  therefore,  the 
place  of  the  expert  is  destined  to  become  increasingly  impor- 
tant. It  is  wise,  it  requires  good  moral  judgment,  to  provide 
pure  water,  clean  streets,  effective  protection  against  crime 
and  fire,  and  to  organize  schools  and  other  institutions  that 
make  for  good  citizenship.  It  is  unwise,  it  is  distinctly  im- 
moral judgment,  and  wicked  conduct,  which  disregards  the 
opinions  and  counsels  of  those  who  know,  and  who  are  there- 
fore entitled  by  their  wisdom  to  decide  in  the  interests  of  the 
people.  That  king  is  saved  by  his  wisdom  who,  knowing 
himself  to  be  a  fool  in  need  of  counsel,  is  wise  enough  to 
choose  wise  counsellors  and  to  follow  their  advice.  But  woe 
to  the  nation  that  is  guided  either  by  its  own  unintelligent  im- 
pulses, however  brave  or  generous  in  themselves,  or  by 
counsellors  and  legislators  that,  however  shrewd  in  political 
manipulation,  have  little  or  no  true  wisdom !  Courage  and  gen- 
erous expenditure  of  treasure  and  blood  may  save  that  people 
from  some  of  the  effects  of  its  folly,  but  courage  and  gener- 
osity can  never  take  the  legitimate  place  of  that  cardinal 
virtue  of  good  judgment  which  is  called  Wisdom. 

In  those  communities  which  are  low  in  the  scale  of  ethical 
evolution  practical  wisdom  occupies  a  most  important  place 
amongst  the  cardinal  virtues.  The  man  who  is  wise  in  coun- 
cil is  the  running  mate  of  the  man  who  is  brave  in  war.    That 


278  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

tribe  or  nation  is  well  equipped  with  the  most  essential  excel- 
lences for  its  existence,  and  for  its  welfare,  which  has  its 
young  men  courageous  warriors  and  its  old  men  wise, "  not 
in  part  nor  in  any  particular  thing  (as  Homer  says  in  the 
Margites  — 

'Him  the  gods  gave  no  skill  with  spade  or  plough, 
Nor  made  him  wise  in  aught'), 

but  generally  wise."  This  wisdom  (cro^ia)  which  is  "  the 
union  of  intuitive  reason  with  scientific  knowledge,  or  scien- 
tific knowledge  of  the  noblest  objects  with  its  crowning  per- 
fection added  to  it,"  ^  has  always  been  a  virtue  highly  prized. 
In  its  very  nature  it  is  a  mixture  of  the  higher  wisdom  and 
practical  wisdom  (but  not  necessarily  the  knowledge  of  a 
specialist  in  any  one  line).  It  was  for  this  that  the  Sophists 
were,  so  far  as  admired  at  all  for  wisdom,  justly  admired.  It 
was  this  which  Socrates,  as  not  wise  but  a  "  lover  of  wisdom," 
wished  to  substitute  for  the  sophistical  pretence  of  wisdom. 
It  is  this  kind  of  wisdom  which,  no  less  rare,  is  no  less  to  be 
prized  and  is  even  more  difficult  in  our  complicated  modern  life. 
Who  is  the  wise  man  of  to-day  ?  He  who,  adjudging  to  the 
various  ends  of  life  the  value  which  really  belongs  to  them, 
judges  correctly  also  as  to  the  means  to  be  employed  in  real- 
izing these  ends,  —  and  all  in  consistency  with  the  ideal  of 
virtuous  living. 

But  wisdom,  like  courage  and  temperance,  has  its  imitators, 
the  shams  that  sometimes  seem  the  same  with  the  virtue,  but 
are  often  really  the  vices  most  unlike  its  genuine  form.  One 
of  these  shams  of  wisdom  is  the  unfounded  conceit  of  knowl- 
edge, which  is  all  the  more  effective  if  the  supposed  content 
of  the  knowledge  be  something  wholly  esoteric  and  hidden 
from  the  common  herd ;  and  if  the  knowing  subject  be  shrewd 
enough  to  be  chary  about  exposing  his  wisdom  to  the  tests  of 
reality  or  of  the  sound  judgment  of  other  men.    It  is  recently 

1  Nic.  Eth.,  VI,  vii. 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  JUDGMENT  279 

reported  that  a  new  Grand  Llama  has  been  proclaimed  in 
Thibet ;  and  he  will  be  worshipped  by  the  people  as  incom- 
parably wise  in  matters  extremely  occult  and  of  the  highest 
import ;  but  it  will  doubtless  be  the  better  for  him  not  to  talk 
too  freely,  but  to  allow  his  owlish  look  and  dignified  silence 
to  be  mistaken  for  the  supremacy  of  wisdom.  To  this  class 
of  the  pretences  of  a  noble  virtue  belong  most  of  the  theories 
and  practical  judgments  of  what  goes  under  the  name  of 
theosophy, "  Christian  "  and  not  a  few  other  forms  of  "  science 
falsely  so-called,"  together  with  the  practices  of  palmistry, 
fortune-telling,  oneiromancy,  and  what  not.  In  saying  this  I 
do  not  mean,  of  course,  to  deny  that  all  or  any  of  these  sub- 
jects admit  of  investigation  with  a  view  to  determine  knowl- 
edge, and  of  that  sound  moral  judgment  respecting  the  conduct 
connected  with  them  which  is  the  essence  of  the  virtue  of 
wisdom.  But  most  undoubtedly  the  far  greater  part  of  this 
sort  of  wisdom  is  only  a  pretence  of  virtue  which  either 
arises  from  ignorance  and  folly,  or  is  more  positively  vicious 
on  account  of  the  large  admixture  with  it  of  mental  laziness 
and  of  falsehood.  Most  pernicious,  perhaps,  of  all  the  shams 
of  wisdom  is  that  low-lived  shrewdness  in  business  which 
stands  ready  to  abrogate  or  avoid  every  principle  belonging 
to  the  higher  wisdom,  if  only  the  chosen  end  of  commercial 
prosperity  can  be  secured. 

From  the  cardinal  virtue  of  the  judgment  which  is  called 
Wisdom  flow  several  subordinate  but  important  forms  of  right 
conduct  that  are  themselves  entitled  to  a  place  in  any  com- 
plete catalogue  of  the  virtues.  These  may  more  properly  be 
called  the  genuine  prudential  virtues.  Here  we  return  to  a 
subject  already  touched  upon  (see  p.  240  f.),  and  are  prepared 
to  regard  it  from  another  and  higher  point  of  view.  What 
is  popularly  called  prudence  is  not  a  virtue,  but  is  rather  the 
vice  of  cowardice,  when  it  consists  merely  in  the  yielding  to 
some  unworthy  form  of  fear.  But,  as  we  have  just  seen,  it  is 
not  easy  to  gain  one's  lawful  ends,  however  worthy,  or  even 


280  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

to  gain  the  use  of  the  means  which  are  likely  to  be  most  ser- 
viceable in  the  pursuit  of  these  ends.  Especially  do  the  vir- 
tues of  justice  and  kindness  toward  our  fellow  men  hedge  in 
and  move  athwart  the  path  along  which  seems  to  lie  the  way 
to  success  in  attaining  the  aims  of  life.  Indeed  these  virtues 
are  essential  parts  of  human  life ;  all  virtues  are  social  and 
have  regard  to  our  fellow  men.  Therefore  wisdom  in  the 
form  of  prudence,  or,  rather,  wisdom  showing  intrinsic  excel- 
lence as  moral  judgment  in  various  forms  of  prudent  conduct, 
is  a  marked  characteristic  of  the  truly  good  man.  Wisdom 
itself,  although  a  cardinal  virtue,  is  qualified  by  the  other  car- 
dinal virtues  of  justice,  kindness,  etc.  But  it,  in  turn,  quali- 
fies them ;  kindness  and  even  justice,  must  be  wise,  in  order 
to  reach  their  highest  estate.  And  thus  the  wise  man  will  be 
cautious  in  action,  where  the  virtue  of  caution  is  demanded  ; 
and  he  will  be  deliberate  and  fair  minded  in  making  up  his 
opinion,  where  the  virtue  of  deliberation  can  fitly  be  secured. 
He  will  be  provident  with  respect  to  the  present  and  future 
risks  of  life,  considerate  of  the  feelings  and  interests  of  his 
fellows,  judicious  in  selecting  his  associates  and  in  respect  of 
the  trusts  which  he  reposes  in  other  men,  and  discreet  in  his 
selection  of  means  for  realizing  his  own  plans  and  in  his 
adaptation  of  these  means  to  their  appointed  work. 

Nowhere  else  is  the  virtue  of  wisdom  as  a  matter  of  poli- 
tics more  forcefully  commended  than  in  these  words  of  the 
Hebrew  law-giver :  "  Keep  therefore  and  do  them  (i.  e.,  the 
divine  statutes  and  judgments)  ;  for  this  is  your  wisdom  and 
your  understanding  in  the  sight  of  the  nations,  which  shall 
hear  all  these  statutes,  and  say,  Surely  this  great  nation  is  a 
wise  and  understanding  people." 

Perhaps  the  loftiest,  and  often  the  most  pathetic,  exhibition 
which  the  truly  wise  man  can  make  of  his  wisdom  is  in  the  form 
of  Resignation,  or  voluntary  and  intelligent  judgment  in  view  of 
the  limitations  which  belong  inevitably  to  the  life  of  the  individ- 
ual and  of  the  race.     Ideals  of  every  kind,  the  more  they  are 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  JUDGMENT  281 

contemplated  and  subjected  to  thoughtful  consideration,  the 
more  do  they  rise  and  expand  themselves  before  the  mind.  The 
more  passionately,  enthusiastically,  and  hopefully  they  are 
pursued,  the  more  bitter  the  strife  becomes  to  attain  them, 
the  more  inevitable  the  disappointment  over  the  very  partial 
character  of  the  realization  of  them  which  human  efforts  can 
secure.  But  the  nature  of  morality  requires  the  devoted  and 
unswerving  pursuit  of  one  of  the  loftiest  and  most  unattain- 
able of  all  human  ideals  ;  this  is —  to  speak  only,  for  the  pres- 
ent, from  the  point  of  view  which  I  am  holding  —  the  reality 
of  the  Virtuous  Life,  in  its  perfection  as  an  Ideal.  Speak 
as  one  may  of  moral  freedom,  and  exalt  as  one  will  the 
power  of  man  to  realize  his  noblest  ambitions,  the  Koran  is 
truer  to  experience  in  declaring  that  a  man  might  as  well 
hope  to  cross  the  gulf  of  hell  on  a  hair  as  to  live  a  life  wholly 
without  wrong-doing,  than  he  would  be  who  should  claim  the 
ability,  in  fact, to  realize  this  ideal  of  perfectly  virtuous  living. 
To  relinquish  the  pursuit  of  the  ideal  is  to  drop  down  from 
the  demands  of  the  higher  wisdom  to  the  level  of  a  wrong 
tolerance  of  vice :  but  to  fail,  in  one's  plans  and  in  one's  use 
of  means,  of  all  recognition  of  the  inevitable  limitations  of 
the  Moral  Life,  to  continue  vainly  to  "kick  against  the 
pricks,"  is  also  a  fatal  wrong  toward  the  counsels  of  practi- 
cal wisdom.  If  patience,  endurance,  and  courage  are  virtues 
of  will  which  must  characterize,  unremittingly,  the  pursuit  of 
the  ends  of  morality,  resignation  is  a  habit  of  mind  toward 
the  success  of  such  pursuit  which  is  one  of  the  noblest  and 
most  necessary  forms  of  wisdom  :  —  most  difficult,  too,  for  the 
most  noble  and  aspiring  souls,  whose  temptation  and  failure  — 
not  to  say,  whose  vice  — is  to  be  not  resigned. 

Resignation  is  then,  a  virtue  of  rational  judgment  which 
leads  to  a  certain  yielding  of  will  before  the  inevitable  limi- 
tations of  the  moral,  as  of  every  other  form  of  life.  It  results 
in  the  no  less  patient,  enduring,  and  passionate  pursuit  of  the 
moral  ideal,  though  with  a  constant  attitude  of  mind  that 


282  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

is  rationally  adjusted  to  the  fixed  conditions  of  that  environ- 
ment in  the  midst  of  which  this  ideal  must  be  pursued.  For, 
as  says  Lotze :  ^  "  Neither  ought  conduct  to  be  fruitlessly 
directed  toward  what  is  in  itself  impossible,  nor  ought  a  con- 
test to  be  waged  against  what  is  unavoidable.  This  is  the 
thought  of  Resignation,  by  which  all  our  activity  is  limited  to 
real  and  attainable  ends." 

In  its  highest  exercise  this  kind  of  wisdom  almost  impera- 
tively demands  the  support  of  the  religious  motive.  It  is, 
possibly,  conceivable  that  a  man  may  still  retain  his  devotion 
to  moral  ideals  and  practice,  and  also  gain  the  pure  virtue  of 
resignation  before  the  limitations  of  life  when  these  limita- 
tions are  regarded  from  an  absolutely  fatalistic  point  of  view. 
But  the  shikata  ga  nai  Q'  it  cannot  be  helped  ")  of  the  careless 
Japanese  servant,  and  the  erect  head  and  unbending  will  of 
the  ancient  Stoic  philosopher,  before  the  destiny  of  pain  and 
defeat,  are  scarcely  on  a  level  with  this  form  of  wisdom. 
The  voluntary  bending  of  our  wills  to  a  Will  in  whose 
wisdom  we  have  a  reasonable  confidence  is  a  great  support, 
if  it  be  not  the  indispensable  condition,  of  the  virtue  of 
resignation. 

The  vices  which  are  the  opposite  of  this  virtue  are  some- 
what manifold.  Among  them  are  the  discontent,  the  peev- 
ishness, and  fretfulness  which  men  whose  lives  are  full  of 
disappointed  plans  for  realizing  worthy  ideals  so  often  share 
with  the  men  of  selfish  and  unideal  lives.  There  is  also  that 
"high-flying  extravagance "  of  aims  and  plans  which  often 
characterizes  the  fanatic  or  the  megalo-maniac.  Saddest  of 
all  is  the  rebellious  spirit  with  which  the  proudest  and  most 
incorruptible  souls  sometimes  meet  the  inevitable  result  of 
their  honorable  struggle  for  the  supremacy  of  truth  and 
justice.  Hence  comes  the  moving  spectacle  of  a  Prometheus 
Vinctus,  —  a  man  who  has  striven  heroically  for  the  good 
of  humanity,  now  bound  and  suffering  to  have  his  vitals  torn 

1  Outlines  of  Practical  Philosophy,  p.  27. 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  JUDGMENT  283 

by  the  vultures  that  have  hitherto  been  restrained  by  fear 
in  their  desire  to  approach.  That  purifying  function  of 
tragedy  which  Aristotle  recognized  is  exercised  when  reflec- 
tion reveals  the  moral  lesson  of  human  experiences  like  these. 

The  second  cardinal  virtue  of  judgment  is  Justness ;  and 
in  treating  of  it  we  have  a  more  complicated  and  difficult 
conception  before  us  than  has  been  presented  by  any  of  the 
previously  considered  forms  of  virtue.  Courage  and  con- 
stancy are  comparatively  simple  affairs ;  their  psychological 
nature  and  the  historical  conditions  which  have  enforced 
them  and  which  have  determined  their  several  principal 
forms  of  manifestation  are  comparatively  easy  to  describe 
and  to  estimate.  Since  temperance  has  its  range  of  control 
over  so  many  different  and  often  conflicting  impulses  and 
desires,  its  psychological  description,  historical  evolution, 
and  practical  application  furnish  somewhat  more  difficult 
problems  for  the  student  of  ethics.  But  none  of  these  vir- 
tues, as  respects  its  complexity  and  the  obscure  problems  it 
presents,  equals  any  one  of  the  several  virtues  of  judgment. 

Justness  is  a  term  which  covers  a  group  of  forms  of 
virtuous  conduct  whose  psychological  origin  and  character, 
and  whose  historical  evolution,  are  very  complicated  and 
obscure.  Whoever  has  to  take  the  part  of  the  judge,  and  to 
pronounce  judgments  that  must  seem  fair  and  fit  to  the  criti- 
cal moral  consciousness,  knows  that  he  can  seldom  be  sure 
of  securing  more  for  these  judgments  than  his  own  just 
intention.  Subjective  justice,  —  what  is  it,  as  respects  its 
origin  and  character  from  the  psychologist's  point  of  view  ? 
Objective  justice,  the  spirit  of  justness  realized,  where  in 
the  universe  shall  the  man  find  it  who  has  not  either  already 
lost  the  red  blood  from  his  conception  of  the  ethical  Ideal ; 
or  else  has  answered  with  a  faith  far  transcending  sight  the 
pressing  inquiry :  "  Shall  not  the  Judge  of  all  the  earth  do 
right? '' 

This   complexity  of  psychological  nature   and  historical 


284  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

development  requires  recognition.  In  the  effort  to  cover  all 
that  virtuousness  which  seems  to  give  their  characteristic 
good  quality  to  an  entire  group  of  the  most  fundamental  and 
universally  commended  virtues,  I  have  therefore  adopted 
the  word  "  Justness. "  By  this  I  do  not  mean  mere  compli- 
ance with  the  customs  and  laws,  whether  common  or  statute, 
which  regulate  the  relations  of  men,  —  in  business  dealings, 
in  civil  and  criminal  procedures,  or  in  the  freer  intercourse 
of  friendship  or  the  family  life.  Nor  simply  by  dealing  out 
rewards  and  punishments  according  to  one's  ideas  of  the 
merit  or  demerit  of  others'  conduct,  together  with  the  wise 
insistence  that  one's  self  shall  be  treated  justly  by  others, 
does  one  become  perfectly  just.  On  the  contrary,  submis- 
sion to  a  large  amount  of  injustice  from  others,  and  no  little 
treatment  of  others  which  it  is  impossible  to  make  consis- 
tent with  the  conception  of  a  strict  distributive  justice, 
seems  inevitable  in  every  good  man's  life.  Even  in  legal 
administration,  the  abrogation  or  ameliorating  of  justice,  in 
the  narrower  meaning  of  the  word,  is  at  least  occasionally 
demanded  in  the  interests  of  the  higher  virtue  of  justness; 
just  as  the  higher  wisdom  sometimes  makes  it  necessary  to 
disregard  all  ordinary  prudential  maxims.  Mere  justice, 
for  its  own  sake,  may  become  a  horrible  fetish ;  its  worship 
may  result  in  conduct  that,  from  the  higher  standpoints  of 
moral  consciousness,  seems  thoroughly  defective  in  respect 
of  virtuousness,   if  not  positively  criminal. 

There  is  undoubtedly,  however,  an  entire  group  of  virtues 
which  appear  most  fitly  to  fall  together  under  one  term, 
and  which  cannot  be  resolved  into  "  benevolence,"  in  any 
properly  restricted  meaning  of  the  latter  word.  Such  are, 
for  example,  honesty,  honor,  equity,  fairness,  and  much 
truthtelling  and  enlightened  kindness.  In  some  sort,  too, 
it  may  be  said  of  justness  that  it  includes  the  essence  of  all 
virtuousness.  The  author  of  the  Fifth  Book  of  the  Nicoma- 
chean  Ethics  recognizes  a  kind  of  general  justice,  including 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  JUDGMENT  285 

the  legal  and  the  fair :  "  Justice,  then,  as  so  defined,  is 
complete  virtue,  although  not  complete  in  an  absolute  sense, 
but  in  relation  to  one's  neighbor."  This  justice,  which  is 
the  exhibition  of  the  spirit  of  virtue  toward  others,  "  is  not 
a  part  of  virtue  but  the  whole  of  virtue."  Thus  understood, 
it  is,  of  course,  worthy  of  the  highest  praise.  Justice  and 
virtue  are  one  and  the  same  character  differently  viewed. 
"  On  this  account  it  is  often  spoken  of  as  the  chief  of  vir- 
tues, and  such  that '  neither  evening  nor  morning  star  is  so 
lovely. '  " 

This  high  estimate  of  justness,  as  well  as  its  complex 
character,  cannot  be  considered  as  due  chiefly  to  the  evolu- 
tion of  law  and  custom.  The  conception  and  the  practice 
certainly  were  far  enough  apart  among  the  Greeks  of  Aris- 
totle's time.  In  general,  however,  it  may  be  urged  that 
where  the  discomforts  and  disasters  of  unjust  judgment  are 
most  abundant,  the  praises  of  the  virtue  of  just  judgment 
are  apt  to  be  most  loud.  But  where  it  is  assumed  in  the 
very  structure  of  the  government  and  of  society  that  a  large 
measure  of  equality  belongs  by  right  to  every  individual, 
and  where  the  laws  are  trusted  to  regulate  both  distributive 
and  retributive  justice,  the  difficulties  of  actualizing  this 
theoretical  equality,  and  so  the  actual  failures  in  fairness  and 
equity,  are  less  easily  made  obvious.  Yet  the  essentials 
of  this  virtue  are  probably  as  highly  prized  among  savage 
peoples  as  among  the  most  elaborately  constituted  and  highly 
civilized  communities.  The  civilized  practice,  however,  is 
about  as  far  below  the  current  ideal  of  this  most  important 
virtue  as  the  practice  of  ancient  times  and  of  savage  peoples 
has  ever  been  below  their  lower  ideal.  "  Perhaps,"  says 
one  author,  1  "  no  description  of  savage  character  is  fairer 
than  Mariner's  of  the  Tongan  Islanders.  '  Their  notions,' 
he  says,  *  in  respect  to  honor  and  justice  are  tolerably  well- 
defined,  steady,  and  universal ;  but  in  point  of  practice  both 

1  Farrer,  Primitive  Manners  and  Customs,  p.  127  f. 


286  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

chiefs  and  people,  taking  them  generally,  are  irregular  and 
fickle,  being  in  some  respects  extremely  honorable  and  just, 
and  in  others  the  contrary,  as  a  variety  of  causes  may  oper- 
ate. '  But  the  justice  of  such  remarks  is  lost  in  their  vague- 
ness, and  their  impartial  generality  would  render  them  of 
world-wide  rather  than  of  merely  local  or  insular  applica- 
tion." Who  that  knows  "the  chiefs  and  people"  of  the 
United  States  or  of  Great  Britain  could  claim  for  them  any- 
thing better  respecting  their  notions  of  justice,  or  anything 
less  bad  respecting  their  practice  of  this  entrancing  virtue  ? 
Itis  — 

"  This  even-handed  justice 

Commends  the  ingredients  of  our  poisoned  chalice 

To  our  own  lips." 

And  the  cry  of  the  ages  is :  "  There  is  not  a  just  man  upon 
earth,  that  doeth  good,  and  sinneth  not "  (Eccles.  vii.  20). 
Where  justice  is  supposed  to  reign,  it  is  little  appreciated. 
Where  ifc  is  most  lacking,  it  is  most  praised. 

An  analysis  of  the  virtue  of  Justness  shows  that  the  ap- 
preciation which  it  receives  is  due  to  the  very  nature  of  the 
Moral  Self  in  its  social  environment  with  other  selves; 
while  the  immense  variety  of  customs,  laws,  opinions,  and 
judicial  decisions  which  have  given  concrete  realization  to 
this  virtue  is  due  to  the  varied  nature  of  man's  moral  evolu- 
tion. Only  some  such  distinction  as  this  will  help  us  solve 
this  paradox  of  experience.  That  one  ought  to  be  just,  and 
to  require  justice  of  others, — this  comes  out  of  the  moral 
constitution  of  man  which  is  at  the  same  time  self-regarding 
and  social.  What  constitutes  justice,  under  certain  definite 
circumstances  or  in  every  special  case  needing  determina- 
tion,—  this  is  a  question,  to  answer  which  requires  an  im- 
measurable fund  of  historical  information  and  illimitable 
tact  in  forming  particular  judgments.  The  spirit  of  fair- 
ness, ready  at  all  times  to  infuse  the  judgment,  —  one  can 
understand,  appraise,  and  cultivate  this.     The  actually  fair 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  JUDGMENT  287 

apportionment  of  the  goods  and  evils  of  life,  so  far  as  these 
depend  upon  one's  just  judgment,  — no  one  can  hope  to  ac- 
complish much  of  that.  The  psychology  of  the  virtue,  though 
complex  and  somewhat  obscure,  arises  out  of  the  depths  of 
personal  existence;  it  springs  from  the  permanent  nature 
of  moral  and  social  beings.  The  account  of  the  various 
forms  which  the  virtue  has  assumed,  although  interesting 
and  helpful  to  the  understanding  of  its  intrinsic  nature,  is 
due  to  environment  and  historical  conditions. 

By  Justness,  as  a  cardinal  virtue,  I  understand  the  volun- 
tary judgment  which  duly  apportions  to  men  their  share  of 
the  goods  and  the  evils  of  life,  so  far  as  these  goods  and  evils 
are  dependent  upon  human  conduct.  Injustice,  popularly 
so-called,  is  indeed  customarily  regarded  as  some  deed 
which  either  violates  the  rights  of  others  by  taking  from 
them  what  they  already  possess,  or  else  prevents  them  from 
receiving  what  they  have  a  right  to  possess.  But  even  in 
such  matters  it  is  recognized  that  the  person  who  cannot  in 
any  way  effect  the  result  by  his  action  is  as  capable  as 
another  of  being,  in  his  judgment,  either  just  or  unjust. 
Men  demand  just  judgment  of  their  fellows,  even  where  the 
bare  satisfaction  of  being  justly  judged  is  the  only  appreci- 
able result.  Indeed,  in  many  cases,  if  it  is  justice^  for  its 
own  sake,  which  they  demand,  and  not  the  "  pound  of  flesh  " 
for  its  sake,  men  prefer  just  judgment  even  when  it  is,  from 
the  nature  of  the  case,  not  possible  to  carry  the  subjective 
virtue  into  objective  realization.  And  as  for  the  case  of 
the  man  who  judges  virtuously  but  will  not  act  according 
to  his  own  judgment,  his  failure  and  vice  are  everywhere 
severely  condemned. 

The  good  things  and  the  evil  things  of  man's  life  are,  to 
a  certain  increasingly  large  extent,  disposable  according  to 
the  decisions  of  men  themselves.  It  is  within  the  sphere  of 
such  things  that  justice  moves.  Where  men,  whether  in  the 
lower  and  coarser  or  in  the  higher  and  more  refined  forms 


288  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

of  religious  faith,  regard  this  distribution  of  good  and  evil 
as  dependent  upon  the  Divine  Will,  they  bring  even  the 
judgment  which  guides  that  Will  before  the  bar  of  human 
judgment.  1  They  argue  with  themselves  and  with  one  an- 
other as  to  the  justice  of  the  gods,  or  of  the  One  Supreme 
God.  But  this  working  of  the  religious  consciousness  only 
confirms  the  conception  of  this  virtue  which  I  am  advocating. 
In  the  distribution  of  the  evils  of  floods,  cyclones,  and  strokes 
of  lightning,  they  do  not  demand  justice  of  their  fellow-men 
unless,  as  in  the  case  of  the  disasters  at  Johnstown  and 
Galveston,  the  results  can  somehow  be  traced  back  to  re- 
sponsible human  action.  But  earth  and  air  and  water,  with 
tlieir  common  stock  of  bane  and  blessing,  are  disposable  by 
the  will  of  man,  according  to  fair  or  unfair  judgment ;  and 
so  are  the  fruits  and  deposits  of  the  earth,  the  breezes  of 
heaven,  and  the  contents  of  river,  lake,  and  ocean.  And  He 
who  made  men  in  his  own  image  commanded :  "  Let  them 
have  dominion  over  the  fish  of  the  sea,  and  over  the  fowl  of 
the  air,  and  over  the  cattle,  and  over  all  the  earth,  and  over 
every  creeping  thing  that  creepeth  upon  the  earth." 

It  is  not  material  goods  alone  whose  apportionment  de- 
pends upon  the  conduct  of  man.  Honor  in  the  eyes  of  one's 
fellows,  reputation,  political  place  and  influence,  social 
position,  intellectual  attainment,  opportunities  for  moral 
and  spiritual  welfare,  are  also  among  the  things  for  the 
distribution  of  which  the  virtuous  judgment  which  we  call 
justness  is  imperatively  demanded.  This  dependable  char- 
acter of  those  goods  which  all  men  desire,  and  of  those  evils 
which  all  men  wish  to  avoid,  upon  man's  conduct  is  the 
fundamental  and  universal  fact  which  makes  human  jus- 
tice and  injustice  possible. 

Within  the  consciousness  of  man,  therefore,  there  arises 

1  For  a  discussion  of  some  of  the  curious  implications  regarding  the  nature  of 
Reality  which  this  involves,  see  Philosophy  of  Knowledge,  chap.  XVII  and  A 
Theory  of  Reality,  chap.  XIV  and  XVIL 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  JUDGMENT  289 

what  may  be  called  an  instinctive  sense  of  justice;  and  with 
the  development  of  moral  self-consciousness  there  comes  a 
sort  of  sacred  apperception  of  the  worth  of  personality.  In 
its  lower  and  beginning  forms,  this  so-called  "  sense  of 
justice  "  is  chiefly  protective  and  retributive.  It  has  its  foil 
in  the  animal  consciousness;  but  injustice  does  not  cut 
deep  with  the  lower  animals  as  it  does  with  man,  and  it  is 
doubtful  whether  anything  resembling  its  dullest  human 
appreciation  is  to  be  found  with  them.  Wolves  that  hunt 
in  packs  do  indeed  contend  with  one  another  for  a  share 
in  the  captures  of  the  hunt ;  and  ants  have  a  semblance  of 
organization  in  which  each  member  has  its  duly  allotted 
place,  and  suffers  the  just  penalty  of  being  found  derelict  in 
duty  at  that  particular  place.  In  fact,  however,  the  con- 
sciousness with  which  all  this  is  done  probably  does  not  even 
remotely  resemble  that  of  the  Homeric  heroes  when  they 
dispute  over  the  spoils  of  war,  or  the  places  of  honor  and 
of  leadership.  There  are  seemingly  authentic  stories  of 
animals  —  notably  of  elephants  —  cherishing  the  spirit  of 
revenge  and  punishing  those  who  had  excited  their  anger, 
even  after  considerable  intervals  of  time.  But  it  is  doubtful 
whether  the  sense  of  being  wronged,  and  of  righting  the 
wrong  in  accordance  with  the  satisfactions  of  moral  con- 
sciousness, such  as  the  lowest  savages  manifest,  is  back  of 
any  of  these  analogous  actions  on  the  part  of  the  lower 
animals. 

Adult  human  beings  generally  resent  attempts  to  deprive 
them  of  good,  or  to  inflict  evil  upon  them,  not  merely  in  the 
spirit  of  instinctive  anger,  but  with  the  approving  con- 
sciousness of  protecting  their  rights.  We  believe  also  that 
Lotze  ^  is  true  to  the  psychological  facts,  when,  in  discussing 
"the  simple  moral  ideals,"  he  declares:  "Retribution  is 
agreeable  to  conscience;  that  is  to  say,  the  returning  of  a 
corresponding  measure  of  reward  or  of  punishment  to  a  will, 

1  Outlines  of  Practical  Philosophy,  p.  29. 
19 


290  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

which  has  occasioned  a  definite  measure  of  weal  or  woe.'* 
Every  man,  by  virtue  of  his  normal  moral  consciousness,  is 
capable,  not  only  of  feeling  spontaneous  anger  or  prolonged 
resentment,  but  also  of  feeling  "  wronged  "  and  of  cherishing 
the  desire  to  see  the  wrong  somehow  righted.  Therefore, 
the  virtue  of  temperance  in  the  form  of  the  self-control  of 
anger  only  limits  but  does  not  extinguish  the  sense  of  jus- 
tice. On  the  contrary,  it  requires  justness,  —  the  submis- 
sion of  the  feeling  of  anger  to  rational  considerations  in 
order  that  all  the  interests  of  the  Virtuous  Life  may  be  the 
better  conserved  and  promoted.  Here  also  justness  itself, 
in  the  higher  form  of  this  virtue,  intervenes  to  correct  the 
tendency  to  an  unjust  excess  of  merely  protective  and  retribu- 
tive justice.  For  the  man  who  invokes  even  the  most  primi- 
tive sense  of  justice  is  always  a  member  of  some  sort  of  a 
community ;  and  he  is  necessarily  restrained  by  the  enforced 
obligation  to  remember  that  the  man  who  has  wronged  him 
is  still  also  a  man  unless,  indeed,  he  be  an  outlaw,  or  a 
beast  of  a  man.  Eetribution  itself,  therefore,  must  also 
take  on  the  garb  of  justness,  must  be  measured  according  to 
custom  or  to  law,  whether  it  be  between  members  of  the  same 
tribe,  or  between  different  tribes. 

It  would  take  the  discussion  too  far  afield  to  examine 
thoroughly  the  psychological  origin  and  historical  evolution 
of  the  doctrine  of  human  rights.  It  is  enough  for  the 
present  purpose  to  know  that  the  consciousness  out  of  which 
this  doctrine  develops  is  strictly  universal;  it  belongs  to 
man  everywhere  and  under  all  circumstances,  to  man  as 
man.  Every  normal  adult  human  being  claims  for  himself 
some  rights,  and  also  acknowledges  the  obligation  to  respect 
some  of  the  claims  made  by  others  for  the  satisfaction  of 
their  rights.  Every  man  believes  that  certain  of  the  good 
things  of  life  are  his  dues,  and  is  irrevocably  committed  to 
the  conviction  that  he  ought  to  be  exempted  from  certain 
evils  at  the  hands  of  his  fellow-men.     What  precisely  are 


VIRTUES  OF   THE  JUDGMENT  291 

these  goods  and  evils,  and  what  the  measure  of  them,  which 
justice  demands  for  every  man,  is  a  question  whose  answer 
admits  of  no  general  agreement.  The  Javanese  servant 
will  not  resent  fines  and  blows  from  his  master,  if  they  are 
"  nominated  in  the  bond "  which  the  customary  relation 
executes;  but  he  will  kill  you  with  good  conscience,  and 
as  a  duty,  if  you  call  him  certain  opprobrious  names.  The 
"  grafters "  and  "  strong-armed "  thieves  of  our  modern 
American  cities  are  ready  enough  to  insist  upon  what  they 
call  the  "  fair  thing"  in  their  iniquitous  partnership  with 
the  police.  Nor  do  they  have  any  less  respect  for  the  justice 
of  the  authorities  that  arrest,  imprison,  and  hang  them,  if 
only  such  is  their  fate  in  the  result  of  a  "  fair  "  fight  be- 
tween themselves  and  the  public  good. 

In  some  sort,  then,  every  developed  moral  consciousness 
places  all  individual  moral  selves  on  a  basis  of  equality. 
The  goods  and  the  evils  of  human  life  are  manifold;  the 
former  are  somewhat  uncertain,  yet  on  the  whole  abundant 
enough  for  all  to  have  some  share ;  the  evils  are  inevitable 
and  of  such  nature  that  every  one  must  have  some  share. 
The  distribution  of  both  goods  and  evils  depends  largely, 
either  directly  or  indirectly,  upon  the  will  of  man.  Every 
Self,  because  of  his  selfhood,  is  morally  entitled  to  his  own 
proper  share ;  to  this  he  has  rights,  and  he  is  in  duty  bound 
to  leave  to  every  other  the  share  that  is  his  own.  If  in 
human  society  there  is  a  failure  here,  and  the  failure  is  due 
to  human  conduct,  wrong  has  been  done.  Justice  demands, 
originally,  the  avoidance  of  all  such  wrong;  it  requires  the 
positive  virtue  which  assists  in  the  equable  allotment  of  both 
good  and  evil.  But  when  the  wrong  of  injustice  has  been 
committed,  justice  demands  that  punishment  should  correct 
the  wrong.  That  curious  mixture  of  highflown  talk  about 
essential  rights,  and  of  intense  feeling  with  respect  to 
exacting  and  rendering  justice  to  these  rights,  with  what 
we  should  regard  as  the  most  flagrant  injustice  in  the  work- 


292  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

ing  of  the  existing  customs  and  laws,  and  with  the  most 
confused  and  inadequate  notions  of  personal  responsibility, 
of  which  human  society  is  capable,  is  perhaps  nowhere  else 
so  well  illustrated  as  in  China. ^ 

The  case  is  not,  then,  as  though  man,  like  the  other  animals, 
simply  wanted  the  satisfaction  of  his  desires ;  for  his  social 
life  rests  upon  the  ethical  demand,  as  a  right,  of  a  due  pro- 
portion of  the  common  good.  Why  this  universal  demand  ? 
and,  Why  this  concession  of  the  Tightness  of  a  similar 
demand  by  others  ?  Some  crude  estimate,  at  least,  of  that 
personal  worth  in  which  each  individual  has  a  share  must  be 
at  the  bottom  of  the  demand.  It  is  this  which  in  part  (bat 
only  in  part)  accounts  for  the  satisfaction  which  all  man- 
kind feel  in  retributive  justice.  Pain  suffered  by  the  offender 
and  inflicted  by  the  offended  may  satisfy  the  passion  for 
vengeance.  Punishment  regulated  by  custom  or  legal  enact- 
ment, and  proportioned  duly,  makes  for  the  peace  and  order 
of  the  community.  But  outraged  sense  of  justice  puts  in  its 
voice  at  this  point  with  a  claim  for  satisfaction  that  is  of  a 
deeper  sort.  Only  in  accordance  with  this  view,  it  seems  to 
me,  can  we  account  for  such  ethical  phenomena  as  the  fre- 
quent self-punishment  of  criminals  (sometimes  even  with 
death);  or  where,  as  in  "  Old  Japan,"  the  corporate  con- 
science was  sensitive  and  the  conceptions  of  personality 
vague,  and  the  man  of  honor  voluntarily  assumed  the  penalty 
needed  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  justice  as  against  the  com- 
munity at  large. 

Although  compliance  with  custom  and  observance  of  legal- 
ity cannot  be  identified  with  the  virtue  of  Justness,  and 
although  regard  for  the  current  forms  of  behavior  and  for 
obedience  to  the  laws  cannot  explain  the  attitude  of  men 
toward  their  criminal  fellows,  yet  this  virtue  can  never  get 
concrete  expression  in  action  irrespective  of  custom  and 
legality.  Ignorance,  or  scorn  of  custom  or  of  the  existing 
1  See  Chinese  Characteristics,  by  Arthur  H.  Smith. 


VIRTUES  OF   THE  JUDGMENT  293 

legal  enactments,  makes  distributive  justice  difficult;  it 
makes  protective  or  punitive  justice  well-nigh  impossible. 
For  the  measure  of  the  rights  to  which  most  men  think 
themselves  entitled  is  that  afforded  by  either  one,  or  by 
both,  of  these  two  standards.  All  the  others  have  this 
good  fortune,  why  cannot  I  ?  None  of  my  fellows  are 
treated  so  ill,  why  should  I  be  ?  These  are  questions  which 
children  and  childish  men  and  women  are  forever  asking 
of  themselves  and  of  one  another.  If  they  cannot  get  a  sat- 
isfactory answer  from  human  sources,  they  will  have  it  from 
heaven.  Thus  struggles  for  precedence  at  courts  and  at  all 
manner  of  functions,  and  for  the  enjoyment  of  all  the  trivi- 
alities of  life,  are  gloried  over  and  made  seemingly  to  have 
a  certain  ethical  respectability,  by  an  appeal  to  this  univer- 
sal and  eternal  regard  for  what  is  fair  and  just.  Each 
rank,  each  circle,  each  social  class,  makes  in  this  way  its 
attempt  at  the  fixing  of  some  accepted  standard. 

But  as,  in  the  evolution  of  moral  selfhood  the  tenet  of  the 
equality  of  all  selves,  in  some  respects  at  least,  becomes 
more  widely  extended,  and  the  corresponding  sense  of  jus- 
tice and  the  demand  for  the  recognition  of  rights  expand, 
the  customs  and  the  laws  which  regulate  the  concrete  ex- 
pressions of  the  virtue  of  justness  undergo  constant  changes. 
What  was  once  very  just  has  now  become  the  most  rank  and 
unbearable  injustice.  What  is  generous  rather  than  simply 
just  in  one  place,  and  under  one  set  of  circumstances,  seems 
intolerable  when  change  of  place  and  of  circumstances  must 
be  taken  into  the  account.  Practical  justice  is,  therefore, 
doomed  ever  to  shift  and  alter  both  its  grounds  and  its  char- 
acter. Custom  and  law  cannot  confine  it,  although  custom 
and  law  are  so  largely  the  expressions  which  it  has  given  to 
its  own  inner  spirit  and  intent. 

On  the  other  hand,  as  there  is  a  higher  wisdom,  so  there 
is  a  higher  justness.  This  higher  justness  judges  the  cus- 
toms and  the  laws  themselves  and  condemns  or  approbates 


294  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

them  in  accordance  with  its  own  ideals.     In  order  to  be 
just,  and  so  true  to  its  own  higher  nature,  this  supremely 
virtuous  judgment  must  keep  free  from  the  temptations  of 
Fanaticism;  it  must  always  bear  in   mind  the   inevitable 
limitations  under  which  all  human  ideals  of  virtuous  living 
are   progressively  realized.     At  the  same  time,   and  espe- 
cially in  the  case  of  those  more  highly  complex  civiliza- 
tions where  the  forms  of  justice  have  become  registered  in 
prevalent  customs  and  accepted  laws,  one  is  made  painfully 
aware  that  often  these  same  customs  and  laws  are  most 
blameworthy  and  pernicious  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
higher  justness.     Alas!  that  this   judgment  should  be  so 
emphatically  true  of  the  most  advanced  nations  at  the  pres- 
ent time.     Nothing  else  can  possibly  be  so  disturbing  to  the 
public  morals,  or  so  threatening  to   the  public  welfare,  as 
the  enactment  of  laws  which  the  multitude  of  the  people 
governed  by  those  laws  feel  to  be  unjust  and  unfair.     This, 
however,    is  the    inevitable    result   of    class   legislation  — 
especially  under  a  republican  form  of  government.     Here 
the  very  laws  and  the  whole  structure  of  society  become 
chargeable  with  the  dreadful  crime  of  a  deliberate,  wilful, 
and  protracted  disregard  of  fairness.    It  is  not  individual  acts 
of  injustice,  however  frequent  and  violent,  that  most  threaten 
the  virtuous  quality  or  even  the  stability  of  the  national 
life  of  any  people ;  it  is,  the  rather,  the  organized  and  cus- 
tomary and  legalized  unfairness  which  is  most  dangerous. 
And  what  awful  retribution  has  more  than  once  in  human 
history  followed  a  long-continued  disregard  of  this  essential 
characteristic  of  a  virtuous  National  Life ! 

What,  then,  can  the  individual  man  do  in  order  to  merit 
the  title  of  the  "  perfectly  just "  ?  He  can  (1)  cherish 
always  the  spirit  of  fairness;  (2)  hold  ever  before  him  an 
estimate  of  the  worth  of  every  individual  man  (no  matter  to 
what  race  or  social  rank  the  individual  may  belong,  and 
irrespective  of  the  relative  grade  or  the  total  mixture  of 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  JUDGMENT  295 

human  characteristics  which  constitute  the  individual) ;  (3) 
diligently  inform  himself  as  to  the  relative  values  of  the 
ends  of  life  and  the  means  of  obtaining  them;  (4)  study 
those  customs  and  laws  which  are  so  influential  over  the 
interests  of  men  in  the  use  of  means  for  the  pursuit  of  every 
form  of  good ;  and,  then,  finally,  (5)  fuse  all  these  elements 
of  justness  into  judgment  whenever  any  concrete  question 
arises  concerning  the  share  of  the  common  stock  of  good  and 
evil  which  shall  be  borne  by  any  individual  self  —  himself, 
of  course,  included.  He  who  with  courage  and  constancy, 
and  with  the  spirit  of  tempered  kindness,  always  acts  under 
the  control  of  such  judgment  gives  to  the  world  the  best  pos- 
sible example  of  perfect  Justness.  But  a  perfect  objective 
justice  —  a  wholly  fair  distribution  of  earth's  goods  and 
evils  in  accordance  with  the  merit  of  each  individual  man  — 
is  an  ideal  toward  the  realization  of  which  one  man,  with 
his  highest  wisdom  and  most  strenuous  endeavor,  can  do 
little  enough. 

As  Plato  long  ago  taught,  justice  is  the  reality  of  which 
all  the  division  of  life's  labors  and  acquisitions  is  the  sem- 
blance ;  —  "  dealing,  however,  not  with  the  outward  man  but 
with  the  inward,  which  is  the  true  self  and  concernment  of  a 
man. "  ^ 

**  Say,  what  is  honour  ?     *T  is  the  finest  sense 
Of  Justice  which  the  human  mind  can  frame, 
Intent  each  lurking  frailty  to  disclaim, 
And  guard  the  way  of  life  from  all  offence 
Suffered  or  done." 

Closely  allied  with  the  virtue  of  justness  is  that  other  car- 
dinal virtue  of  intellect  which  I  have  ventured  to  designate 
by  the  somewhat  unusual  title  —  Trueness.  Indeed,  so  close 
is  the  alliance  between  the  two  that  the  latter  might  almost 
be  called  a  species  of  the  former.  There  is,  however,  an 
important  difference  between  them;  and  that  quality  of  ideal 

1  The  Republic,  443. 


296  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

manhood  which  appears  as  sincerity  in  conduct  and  genuine- 
ness of  character  is  not  altogether  the  same  as  that  which 
gives  birth  to  the  virtues  of  fairness,  honesty,  equity  in 
dealing  with  others,  etc. 

By  Trueness  as  a  cardinal  virtue  of  judgment  I  do  not 
understand  mere  truth-telling,  or  speaking  what  is  believed 
to  be  either  true  in  facts  or  to  be  in  theory  accordant  with  a 
large  number  of  facts.  Much  less  can  one  properly  define  this 
virtue  so  as  to  approve  unthinking  bluntness  of  speech,  or 
that  openness  of  conduct  which  reveals  the  thought  and  feel- 
ing without  regard  to  effects  upon  the  thoughts  and  feelings 
of  others.  Undoubtedly,  justice  and  kindness  both  require 
much  concealment,  and  sometimes  even  what  is  inevitably 
misinterpreted  so  as  to  construe  a  voluntary  deceit;  much 
of  this  same  thing  is  also  apparently  necessary  to  a  proper 
self-respect  and  to  the  maintenance  of  any  ground  of  stand- 
ing for  the  exercise  of  the  social  virtues  generally.  Mere 
truth-telling,  for  its  own  sake  and  without  regard  to  conse- 
quences or  to  the  inquiry,  whether  the  truth  ought  to  be  told 
at  all  and  who  is  the  proper  person  to  tell  it,  may  become 
criminal ;  and  such  truth-telling  often  shows  a  defect  in  re- 
spect of 'the  virtues  of  wisdom,  justice,  kindness,  or  even 
courage  and  temperance  and  constancy. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  cannot  be  claimed  either  in  view  of 
the  patent  facts  of  universal  opinion  or  of  the  course  of 
moral  evolution  that  there  is  no  such  cardinal  virtue  as  a 
regard  for  truth  —  in  some  sort,  "  for  its  own  sake."  On 
the  contrary,  "  being  true  "  in  conduct  and  in  character  may 
be  esteemed  the  one  indispensable  condition  of  all  virtuous- 
ness,  the  core  of  all  right  and  dutiful  character.  Limited  as 
is  Aristotle's  conception  ^  of  the  virtue  of  trueness,  he  is 
unstinted  in  his  praise  for  "  the  plain  dealer  "  who  is  truth- 
ful both  in  life  and  speech.  "Falsehood,"  says  Aristotle, 
who  makes  "  irony "  in   dealing  with  one's   inferiors  the 

1  Nic.  Eth.,  IV,  vii. 


VIRTUES   OF  THE  JUDGMENT  297 

virtue  of  a  gentleman,  — "  falsehood  is  in  itself  base  and 
censurable;  truth  is  noble  and  laudable."  And  whatever 
one  may  think  of  Paulsen's  teleological  theory  of  virtuous- 
ness,  neither  the  popular  nor  the  critical  estimate  of  the 
nature  of  all  virtuous  living  can  encourage  us  to  follow  him 
in  exempting  examples  of  infidelity  to  truth  in  practice, 
like  Schopenhauer,  Rousseau,  and  Petrarch,  from  the  charge 
of  falsehood  in  the  most  intensely  moral  meaning  of  the 
word,  on  the  authority  of  a  motto  like  this :  — "  The  man 
who  rings  the  bell  cannot  march  in  the  procession." 

The  student  of  ethics  must  not  hastily  fall  in  with  the  too 
prevalent  opinion  that  the  virtue  of  trueness  is  not  even 
recognized  in  the  lower  stages  of  moral  evolution,  or  among 
peoples  where  lying  and  all  forms  of  deceit  are  habitual  and 
persistent.  It  is  true,  indeed,  that  ignorance,  falsehood, 
and  craft  interpenetrate  the  whole  life  of  almost  all  savage, 
as  well  as  of  many  civilized  peoples.  In  the  case  of  the 
savages,  unceasing  craft  and  deceit  are  so  indispensable  even 
to  continued  existence  that  the  conduct  in  which  they  find  ex- 
pression is  esteemed  an  essential  kind  of  virtue.  Yet  even  in 
such  cases  the  virtue  which  is  really  recognized  and  esteemed 
is,  after  the  notion  of  these  same  people,  a  sort  of  wisdom  or 
prudence.  Only  the  man  who  is  in  the  position  of  independ- 
ence and  power  can  he  —  so  it  is  assumed  —  habitually  frank 
and  truthful.  It  would  not  be  easy  to  show,  however,  any 
essential  difference  in  respect  for  this  virtue  between  the 
most  immoral  peoples  and  those  who  most  pride  themselves 
on  their  superior  morality.  All  men  recognize  how  com- 
paratively difficult  it  is  for  one  to  practise  truthfulness  at 
the  cost  of,  rather  than  in  the  maintenance  of,  the  desirable 
and  good  things  of  life.  Even  the  Ojis  have  a  saying: 
"  When  a  poor  man  makes  a  proverb  it  does  not  spread ; "  and 
in  Accra  it  is  cleverly  declared:  "  A  poor  man's  pipe  does 
not  sound. " 

But  the  persuasion  is  tolerably  widespread  and  embodied 


298  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

in  maxims  among  mankind,  that  it  is  poor  policy  to  lie. 
"  The  liar  is  short-lived,"  says  the  Arabian  proverb. 
"  Lies,  though  many,  will  be  caught  by  Truth,  as  soon  as 
she  rises  up,"  is  the  Wolof  way  of  expressing  the  general 
experience.  "  Even  in  Afghanistan,  where  it  is  said  that 
no  disgrace  attaches  to  lying  per  se,  and  where  lying  is 
called  an  honest  man's  wings,  while  truth  can  only  be 
spoken  by  a  strong  man  or  a  fool,  there  is  also  a  proverb 
with  the  moral,  that  the  career  of  falsehood  is  short."  As 
long  ago  as  Herodotus  it  was  known  how  the  Persian  moral 
philosophy  held,  what  the  Persian  gentleman  practised,  — 
namely,  "  that  the  man  who  speaks  truth  is  always  at  his 
ease;  that  men  never  suffer  from  speaking  the  truth;  that 
it  behoves  them  to  speak  their  minds  unreservedly,  for  there 
is  no  hill  in  front  of  the  tongue. "  Probably,  nowhere  else 
in  the  world  is  falsehood  in  all  its  shades  of  gray,  from  that 
which  is  a  little  off  the  pure  white  of  truth  to  the  blackest  of 
lying,  more  prevalent  than  amongst  the  Hindus  of  India. 
Nowhere  else  is  deceit  of  every  kind  more  ingenious  or  more 
tolerated.  Yet  when  the  Hindu  can  free  his  judgment  from 
the  temptations  of  poverty,  fear,  greed,  and  superstition,  he 
shows  the  same  appreciation  of  the  value  of  trueness  which 
belongs  to  others ;  and  with  the  high-minded  Hindu  gentle- 
man, truth,  as  he  understands  it,  is  as  essential  a  part  of  the 
Virtuous  Life  as  it  is  with  the  high-minded  English  gentle- 
man. In  the  Hindu  moral  philosophy  truthfulness  is  one  of 
the  sattwik  gunas,  or  principles  that  introduce  harmony  "  by 
controlling  self  or  by  sacrificing  self  to  higher  forces ; "  and 
as  such,  it  is  daivik  (or  divine).  "  Of  the  good  man  in  the 
Rig  Veda,"  says  Professor  Hopkins,^  "  are  demanded  piety 
toward  gods  and  manes  and  liberality  to  priests ;  truthfulness 
and  courage."  That  this  virtue  of  judgment  is  connected  in 
the  Hindu  system  of  thinking  with  a  true  apprehension  of 
the  great  religious  and  philosophical  verities  is  not  to  be 

^  Beligions  of  India,  p.  148. 


VIKTUES  OF  THE  JUDGMENT  299 

urged  as  a  mark  of  its  depreciation ;  but  rather  of  the  oppo- 
site, —  while,  as  I  have  already  said,  the  prevalence  and  the 
tolerance  of  the  breaches  of  this  virtue  are  in  India,  as  else- 
where, due  to  ignorance,  superstition,  cowardice,  and  greed. 
As  says  the  base  lago :  — 

"  O  monstrous  world  !     Take  note,  take  note,  O  World, 
To  be  direct  and  honest,  is  not  safe." 

Trueness  involves,  essentially  considered,  an  appreciation 
of  the  value  of  Reality  and  of  the  correspondence  which  may 
be  established  between  it  and  the  Self  by  way  of  its  own 
act  of  true  judgment.  This  appreciation  it  is  which  inspires 
the  noblest  minds  with  the  love  of  the  truth  for  the  truth's 
own  dear  sake.  Such  a  passionate  affection,  however,  when 
subjected  to  psychological  analysis  and  then,  as  far  as  its 
residuum  is  concerned,  to  further  reflective  thinking,  loses 
its  abstract  character,  but  gains  much  thereby  in  actual 
ethical  significance  and  importance.  The  love  of  Truth  for 
its  own  sake  turns  out  to  be  an  affective  appreciation  of 
the  value  of  true  judgment  for  the  Selfs  own  sake,  and  for 
the  sake  of  other  selves ;  and,  finally,  for  the  sake  of  fidelity 
to  that  Supreme  Selfhood  who  is  the  source  and  the  guardian 
of  all  truth  —  "  The  Truth,"  as  well  as  the  Life,  of  man.^ 

By  this  virtue,  accordingly,  I  understand  that  voluntary 
judgment  which  corresponds  to  the  facts  and  principles  of 
Reality  as  these  are  made  known  to  the  Moral  Self.  In 
perception  and  self-consciousness  we  stand  face  to  face  with 
certain  actual  facts.  By  reflection  and  reasoning  we  proceed 
from  the  apprehension  of  those  facts  to  the  knowledge  of 
principles,  or  to  the  belief,  varying  all  the  way  from  timid 
conjecture  to  unshaken  conviction,  in  facts  and  principles 
that  cannot  be  immediately  apprehended  or  (as  often  hap- 
pens) empirically  verified.     It  is  in  the  judgment  that  this 

1  Compare  the  chapters  on  **  Truth  and  Error  "  and  on  '*  The  Ethical  and 
^sthetical  *  Momenta '  of  Knowledge,"  in  the  author's  Philosophy  of  Knowledge 
(XV  and  XVU). 


300  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

total  activity  so  culminates  as  to  come  under  the  rubric  of 
the  true  and  the  false.  It  is  the  actual  judgment  which,  as 
a  species  of  conduct,  merits  the  title  of  being  either  good  or 
bad,  not  only  from  the  logical,  but  also  from  the  ethical 
point  of  view.  This  is  only  to  say  in  other  words  that  the 
Self,  when  voluntarily  pronouncing  judgment,  is  virtuous 
and  meritorious  or  vicious  and  blameworthy,  according  to 
the  relation  which  it  thus  assumes  toward  the  facts  and 
principles  that  appear  to  have  reality. 

Undoubtedly  somewhat  the  same  obscurities  and  perplex- 
ities encompass  this  inquiry  which  were  found  surrounding 
the  discussion  of  the  virtues  of  wisdom  and  justness.  The 
sceptical  questions :  What  is  Truth  ?  and,  How  can  any  one 
assume  that  his  representation  of  it  does  correspond,  and 
that  of  his  fellow-man  does  not  correspond,  to  Reality  ?  need 
not  embarrass  us  at  this  point.  Let  it  be  granted  that 
"  real "  truth  in  this  connection  means  what  seems  true  to 
each  mind;  that  it  is  the  individual's  own  seizure  of  the  fact 
or  of  the  principle.  Without  attention,  memory,  insight, 
thought,  and  the  fair  spirit,  there  is  no  satisfactory  judg- 
ment of  either  fact  or  principle  possible.  So  that  getting 
the  judgment  into  a  form  which  shall  appear  to  ourselves 
clearly  and  fully  to  correspond  with  reality  is  a  complex 
piece  of  conduct  which  always  has  either  a  certain  good  or 
bad  moral  quality. 

But  truths,  like  other  forms  of  good,  have  different  degrees 
of  worth  and  are  therefore  capable  of  being  arranged  in  a 
scale  of  values.  Their  place  in  such  a  scale,  so  far  as  either 
they  or  it  can  be  the  proper  consideration  of  philosophy,  must 
be  determined  by  two  things :  (1)  by  the  relation  in  which 
the  truths,  as  respects  the  possibility  of  their  attainment, 
stand  to  human  conduct ;  and  (2)  by  the  relation  in  which 
the  truths,  when  partially  or  perfectly  attained,  stand  to 
human  welfare. 

It  will  not  do  dogmatically  to  pronounce  upon  the  irre- 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  JUDGMENT  301 

movable  limits  of  human  cognition.  The  folly  of  attempting 
this  after  the  fashion  of  the  Kantian  or  other  agnosticism  is 
made  clear  by  a  consistent  theory  of  knowledge;  and  the  his- 
tory of  the  particular  sciences  is  fall  of  instructive  instances 
of  discoveries  which  have  brought  to  nought  the  agnostic 
declarations  of  the  men  of  science  themselves.  Yet  the 
inquiry,  whether  the  "  game  is  worth  the  candle,'^  when 
judiciously  put,  always  has  an  ethical  import.  And  to 
spend  energy  and  time  that  might  be  given  to  the  solution  of 
solvable  problems  in  the  search  for  unattainable  mysteries, 
or  in  the  hair-splitting  discussion  of  abstract  propositions, 
or  even  in  almost  hopeless  attempt  to  unearth  matters  of 
fact  buried  too  deep  for  human  industry,  may  savor  of  an 
immoral  lack  of  wisdom.  For  the  spirit  of  trueness  is, 
after  all,  opposed  to  the  exploiting  of  mere  fact  or  barren 
theory,  for  the  "truth's  own  sake"  so-called.  But  ethics 
must  be  very  liberal  upon  this  point.  And  a  due  humility 
before  the  great  realities  themselves  strengthens  rather  than 
diminishes  the  faith  that  the  door  into  the  innermost  chamber 
of  Reality  is  never  wholly  shut  to  man ;  and  that  each  fact 
has  some  worthy  place  and  important  significance  in  the 
structure,  as  it  were,  of  that  Reality.  Here  it  will  appear 
to  the  thoughtful  mind  that  fidelity  to  the  virtue  of  True- 
ness approaches,  and  in  a  sisterly  way  embraces,  the  virtue 
of  Resignation. 

It  is  a  more  obvious  remark  in  the  interests  of  a  fuller 
exposition  of  this  form  of  virtuous  judgment,  that  truths 
themselves  stand  in  different  relations  to  human  welfare. 
Our  conception  of  "  The  Truth  "  may,  perhaps,  properly  be 
such  as  to  sanctify  in  some  measure  every  seemingly  insig- 
nificant fact.  Thus  scientific  exactness,  in  all  its  pettiness 
of  details,  may  come  to  have  a  decidedly  ethical  quality  and 
may  even  be  worshipped  with  something  of  the  fervor  of 
religious  devotion.  And  accepting  the  correct  psychological 
view  and  metaphysical  estimate  of  the  virtue  of  trueness, 


302  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

one  can  readily  see  how  such  exactness  meets  a  moral  de- 
mand ;  since  all  truth  is  for  some  self's  sake.  Let  then  the 
"  man  of  science  "  pride  himself  on  having  counted  exactly 
the  petals  of  some  new  species  of  flower  or  the  scales  of  some 
hitherto  unknown  species  of  fish,  and  on  having  correctly 
derived  the  one  from  its  true  plant  progenitor  or  pieced  suc- 
cessfully together  the  skeleton  of  the  other,  —  and  all  the 
more,  if  both  be  extinct  and  of  no  practical  interest  to  either 
pharmacist  or  fisherman.  For  his  own  patience,  industry, 
intellectual  control,  are  features  of  good  selfhood ;  and  he  is 
so  far  virtuous  in  this  piece  of  conduct,  although  the  truth 
he  has  obtained  prove  of  small  value  to  other  selves. 
While,  of  course,  God  knew  it  all  beforehand.  What,  how- 
ever, shall  be  said  of  the  man  who  spends  his  energies  and 
risks  his  life  in  finding  the  way  to  the  North  Pole,  or  the 
best  plan  of  spanning  with  a  bridge  some  river,  but  refuses 
even  earnestly  to  inquire  whether  there  be  any  God,  or  no, 
or  what  is  the  better  way  to  adjust  one's  own  conduct  to  the 
exigencies  of  the  higher  life  and  to  the  attainment  of  its 
supreme  values  ? 

It  is,  of  course,  not  possible  for  a  philosophy  of  conduct 
accurately  to  scale  the  values  belonging  to  every  form  of 
truth;  it  is  sufficient  here  to  point  out  that  the  virtue  of 
trueness,  since  it  is  a  species  of  conduct,  must  always  recog- 
nize its  object  as  a  thing  of  worth.  And  this  good  value, 
which  the  object  has,  is  a  matter  of  degrees.  Like  every 
species  of  good,  therefore,  this  good  which  belongs  to  truth 
has  reference  to  human  welfare — to  the  welfare  of  persons  in 
their  manifold  social  relations.  So  that  the  highest  truth- 
fulness, like  the  highest  wisdom  and  the  highest  justice,  will 
be  exhibited  in  the  forms  of  judgment  that  concern  matters 
of  the  highest  worth.  Although,  perhaps,  nothing  can  be 
further  from  the  spirit  of  an  age  that  values  truth  chiefly 
from  the  commercial  standpoint,  and  even  estimates  the 
truths  of  science  in  dependence  solely  upon  the  worth  of  the 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  JUDGMENT  303 

profit  that  is  in  them,  it  nevertheless  remains  an  invincible 
conclusion  from  the  inmost  nature  of  man :  He  has  most  of  the 
virtue  of  Trueness  who  most  painstakingly  and  sincerely  adjusts 
his  judgments  to  the  realities  that  have  most  of  value  in  relation 
to  the  supreme  ends  of  the  Virtuous  Life,  The  reverse  of  this 
is  also  true:  to  exalt,  either  theoretically  or  practically, 
either  in  education  or  in  life,  so-called  scientific  truth  or 
those  forms  of  knowledge  which  minister  to  success  in  trade 
or  in  warfare,  above  the  truths  of  morals  and  religion,  is  im- 
moral; it  is  distinctly  disloyal  to  the  inmost  spirit  of  the 
virtue  of  trueness  itself. 

The  vices  which  oppose  this  virtue  are  manifold ;  but  they 
do  not  consist  chiefly  of  the  different  kinds  and  degrees  of 
lying  —  a  form  of  evil  conduct  that  is  oftenest  the  expression 
of  the  vices  of  cowardice,  greed,  love  of  notoriety,  etc. 
They  are  chiefly  of  the  following  three  varieties:  (1) 
Thoughtlessness,  whether  taking  the  form  of  carelessness, 
indifference,  or  sloth  in  forming  judgments;  (2)  Dog- 
matism ;  (3)  Partisanship.  Man  is  made  to  be  thoughtful ; 
and  the  ideal  selfhood  is  not  to  be  attained,  or  successfully 
pursued,  or  even  most  distantly  approached,  without  pains- 
taking thought.  It  is  chiefly  thought  that  makes  judgment 
true ;  and  he  who,  for  any  reason,  will  not  think,  is  essen- 
tially untrue  to  his  manhood.  Carelessness,  however,  in- 
evitably results  in  untrue  judgment;  but  taking  care  is  a 
voluntary  matter,  an  activity  of  the  willing  Self  that  is 
essential  to  the  formation  of  all  sound  judgment.  Indif- 
ference, too,  is  destructive  of  sound  judgment;  for,  while 
carelessness  is  likely  to  err  through  haste  and  lack  of  pro- 
longed and  concentrated  attention,  it  may  sometimes  by 
good  luck  hit  the  mark  more  or  less  near  its  centre.  But 
the  vice  of  untrueness  which  is  due  to  a  cool  and  deliberate 
disregard  of  the  value  of  truth  shows  a  more  deeply  seated 
and  repulsive  character.  Especially  is  this  so,  when  the 
indifference  has  for  its  object  the  higher  ethical,  social,  and 


304  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

religious  truths.  Let  it  be  said  again,  then,  that  the  man 
who  claims  that  such  truths  have  no  interest  in  his  sight, 
and  who  treats  them  with  a  practical  neglect  —  not  to  say 
contempt  —  is,  as  respects  the  virtue  of  trueness,  one  of 
the  most  immoral  of  men.  He  is  untrue  to  the  highest 
devotions  —  the  principles  of  conduct,  the  welfare  of  the 
race,  the  attitude  of  the  human  soul  toward  the  Supreme 
Good  —  of  which  his  manhood  is  capable. 

Dogmatism,  too,  is  untrueness,  a  species  of  immorality. 
But  by  dogmatism  I  do  not,  of  course,  mean  either  positive 
knowledge  which  has  subjected  itself  to  the  scientific  tests 
of  valid  cognition,  or  reasoned  opinion  which  is  held  firmly, 
as  opinion,  in  view  of  the  rational  grounds  on  which  it 
reposes,  or  warm  conviction  concerning  moral  issues  where 
wisdom  and  justice  are  difficult  to  secure,  or  even  the  faith 
which  reposes,  somewhat  ignorantly,  in  the  judgment  or 
the  authority  of  others.  All  these  forms  of  judgment  may 
evince,  under  differing  circumstances,  the  various  shades 
of  the  virtue  of  trueness.  Dogmatism  is  the  arrogant  and 
unreasoning  attitude  of  mind,  in  judgment,  toward  the 
facts  and  principles  of  Reality.  No  doubt,  the  dogmatist 
habitually  has  his  reasons  to  offer;  and  they  may  appear 
convincing  to  him  and  to  his  coterie,  if  to  no  others.  And 
to  be  alone  with  The  True  One  in  one's  judgment  may  he 
more  virtuous  than  to  agree  with  the  world's  multitude 
against  Him.  But  he  who  is  in  this  position  of  seem- 
ing isolation  from  his  fellow  men,  or  in  any  position  re- 
sembling it,  escapes  the  vice  of  dogmatism  so  long  as  he 
keeps  free  from  arrogance,  however  firm  in  his  opinions, 
and  remains  ever  willing  and  striving  to  know  the  truth, 
however  this  new  truth  may  disturb  or  contradict  his  past 
opinions. 

In  politics,  and  in  all  the  judgments  which  prevail  among 
the  different  classes.  Partisanship  is  the  most  mischievous 
form  of  the  vice  of  untrueness.     Lies  here  and  there  are 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  JUDGMENT  305 

mischievous  enough;  no  one  but  an  all-seeing  Providence 
can  foretell  how  long  and  how  far  their  mischief  will  spread 
over  the  sphere  of  the  liar's  selfhood  and  over  the  sphere  of 
society.  Habitual  tolerated  trickery,  when  it  permeates  the 
multitude,  is  worse  in  its  effects.  But,  sometimes  in  amus- 
ing as  well  as  appalling  ways,  the  evils  of  this  form  of  the 
vice  come  almost  constantly  to  correct  themselves.  In  parts 
of  the  Orient  everybody  knows  that  everybody  else  is  lying ; 
but  everybody  has  come  pretty  correctly  to  conjecture  what 
everybody  else  truly  means  by  the  lie  that  he  is  telling.  To 
escape  from  the  practical  evils  of  the  vice  without  taking 
part  in  it  requires  time  and  patience;  it  is,  indeed,  quite 
impossible  for  the  inexpert  foreign  traveller.  But  in  its 
practical  mischief  the  vice  of  partisanship  is  worst  of  all. 
It  is  bitter  in  spirit  and  coupled  with  all  injustice  of  judg- 
ment. It  inevitably  expresses  itself  in  methods  of  action 
which  join  all  the  vices  of  cowardice,  unwisdom,  and  un- 
kindness,  in  one  amalgamation  of  baseness.  Inasmuch  as 
it  unites  men  in  masses,  so  that  each  individual  rather 
accentuates  than  corrects  the  untrue  judgments  of  every 
other,  it  is  of  all  forms  of  falsehood  the  most  dangerous  to 
the  civic  welfare  and  to  the  national  life.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  is  the  man  who  remains  true  to  his  ideal  of  man- 
hood, and,  while  benevolently  inclined  to  join  with  others 
in  every  good  cause,  steadfastly  refuses  to  join  with  any, 
or  with  all,  in  efforts  to  debase  this  ideal,  —  it  is  such  a 
man,  who  is  both  most  truly  virtuous  in  his  own  Self  and 
most  truly  valuable  in  his  social  relations. 

The  forms  of  expression  which  the  true  judgment  re- 
ceives, whether  in  speech,  or  in  gesture,  or  in  more  elaborate 
action,  are  manifold;  they  give  rise  to  many  complicated 
and  difficult  ethical  problems.  The  virtue  which  we  have 
been  considering  is  a  virtue  of  judgment;  it  is  the  virtue 
of  trueness,  and  its  opposite  is  found  in  the  different  forms 
of  untrue  judgment.     But  what  is  customarily  understood 

20 


306  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

by  deceit,  falsehood,  or  lying,  has  to  do  with  the  voluntary 
failure  to  make  the  expression  correspond  with  the  judgment 
itself.  These  failures  are,  of  course,  a  species  of  conduct. 
But  as  has  already  been  pointed  out,  the  vices  which  the 
failures  really  evince  are  often,  perhaps  ordinarily,  of 
another  kind;  they  are  cowardice,  greed,  some  unlawful 
desire,  love  of  applause,  etc.  It  is  most  important,  then, 
briefly  to  notice  how  dependent  the  form  and  number  of 
such  vicious  actions  is  upon  the  civic  and  social  environ- 
ment. Attention  has  already  been  called  (p.  296  f.)  to  the 
fact  that,  in  Aristotle's  scheme,  truthfulness  appears  as  the 
virtue  especially  of  the  gentleman,  the  man  of  honor  who 
does  not  need  to  degrade  himself  by  telling  a  falsehood. 
Truthfulness  goes  with  wittiness  and  modesty.  It  is  the 
consciousness  of  superiority  which  makes  the  man  out- 
spoken. ^  In  fact  there  is  much  truth  in  this  view.  Many 
powerful  influences,  both  direct  and  indirect,  may  be  traced 
between  the  civil  and  political  constitution  of  any  com- 
munity and  the  character  and  amount  of  falsehood  prevalent 
in  the  community.  Between  the  tyrant,  or  the  irresponsible 
government  and  its  subjects,  falsehood  is  inevitable;  thus 
Oriental  intrigue  and  lying  are  largely  due  to  wrong  civic 
relations.  In  a  constitutional  but  aristocratic  government, 
the  gentry  are  in  general  truthful ;  they  have  little  tempta- 
tion to  be  false,  and  truthfulness  is  a  primary  virtue  and 
point  of  honor  with  them.  In  a  mercantile  community,  a 
certain  amount  of  truthfulness  is  necessary;  but  as  the 
spirit  of  greed  grows,  and  rivalry  becomes  more  intense,  the 
various  forms  of  deceit  grow  more  elaborate  and  seductive ; 
until  the  experience  of  the  race  in  its  efforts  to  get  the  start 
of  the  great,  abiding,  and  worthy  realities  repeats  itself,  and 
the  Arabian  and  Wolof  proverbs  come  true  again:  "The  liar 
is  short-lived ; "  and  "  Lies,  though  many,  will  be  caught  by 
Truth,  as  soon  as  she  rises  up."     So  far,  however,  as  the 

1  Nic.  Eth.,  IV,  iii,  29. 


VIRTUES  OF  THE  JUDGMENT  807 

essential  spirit  of  Trueness,  as  well  as  of  Justness,  is  con- 
cerned, the  modern  Commercialism,  when  unmodified  by 
the,  at  least,  indirect  influences  of  Christian  benevolence, 
is  every  whit  as  cruel,  false,  and  unscrupulous  as  was  the 
ancient  or  mediasval  greed  of  Empire. 

What  kinds  and  degrees  of  deceit,  if  any,  are  consistent 
with  the  Virtuous  Life  ?  and,  Is  lying  ever  justifiable  ?  — 
these  are  questions  which  it  belongs  to  casuistry  to  raise  and 
to  discuss.  But  the  essential  nature  of  that  virtue  of  the 
judgment  which  is  called  trueness  enables  one  to  make  the 
following  observations  looking  toward  the  success  of  any 
attempt  to  answer  them. 

1.  Trueness,  in  the  higher  meaning  of  the  word,  is  one 
of  the  most  unqualified  of  all  the  virtues.  Indeed,  if  one 
considers  that  all  right  conduct,  and  all  estimate  of  the 
Tightness  of  conduct  depends  upon  true  judgment,  one  may 
affirm  that  this  virtue  is  of  all  most  absolute.  All  the 
virtues  are  essentially  various  forms  of  the  voluntary  con- 
formity of  the  Self  to  its  Ideal;  they  are  all,  therefore, 
different  ways  of  being  true  to  some  type  or  principle,  — so 
far  as  such  trueness  depends  upon  ourselves. 

2.  But  trueness,  as  a  virtue  of  the  judgment,  requires 
courage,  temperance,  constancy,  wisdom,  justness,  kind- 
ness, in  its  own  expression,  —  whether  the  expression  be  in 
the  form  of  speech,  or  in  some  other  form  of  action;  and 
trueness  does  not  require  intemperate,  unwise,  or  unjust 
expression  of  its  own  judgment.  So  that  to  secure  its  own 
proper  influence,  and  even  to  make  its  own  essential  excel- 
lence apparent,  this  virtue  must  somehow  be  combined  with, 
and  qualified  by,  certain  other  virtues.  Concealment  of  the 
judgment  may,  then,  either  be  a  virtue,  or  it  may  be  a  con- 
temptible form  of  vice ;  and  only  good  judgment,  which  is  a 
form  of  conduct,  and  oftentimes  equivalent  to  natural  or 
acquired  tact,  can  decide  between  the  reasons  for  concealing, 
and  the  reasons  for  revealing,  any  true  judgment. 


308  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

3.  The  true  interpretation  of  any  expression  of  judgment, 
the  understanding  of  the  speech  or  other  action  of  another, 
is  always  a  somewhat  doubtful,  and  often  an  extremely  diffi- 
cult matter.  No  amount  of  trueness  in  one  man's  judgment, 
or  fidelity  and  care  in  the  expression  of  the  judgment,  can 
furnish  security  against  other  men's  blundering,  mistaken, 
or  perverted  interpretation.  There  is  often  wisdom,  too,  in 
"answering  a  fool  according  to  his  folly,"  if  you  answer  him 
at  all.  To  a  certain  extent,  moreover,  which  can  never  be 
determined  antecedently,  and  can  never  be  determined  at  all 
with  much  approach  to  accuracy,  all  good  and  truthful  men 
must  allow  themselves  to  be  falsely  interpreted,  whether 
they  speak  or  remain  silent,  whether  they  act  upon  their 
judgment  or  think  fit  to  suspend  action  while  remaining  in 
the  same  true  judgment. 

4.  There  are  certain  matters,  and  many  times,  when  one's 
conduct  cannot  be  altered  on  moral  grounds  in  view  of  the 
fact  that  it  is  certain  to  be  misunderstood.  One  cannot  be 
decent  or  virtuous,  in  a  social  environment  constructed  as 
that  of  man  actually  is,  without  concealing  many  things ;  and 
concealing  in  not  a  few  instances  is  tantamount  to  deceiving. 

5.  Where  those  who  carry  the  utilitarian  or  teleological 
conception  of  the  virtue  of  truthfulness  to  its  extreme  are 
ready  to  justify  deceit,  or  even  lying,  this  justification,  so 
long  as  it  is  in  any  sense  of  the  word  a  moral  affair,  consists 
in  qualifying  this  particular  virtue  by  some  other  virtue.  In 
wisdom  or  kindness  or  justice  toward  others,  they  hold,  one 
may  deceive  or  tell  lies ;  perhaps  sometimes  one  even  ought 
to  tell  a  lie,  or  two,  in  the  interests  of  these  other  virtues. 
But  few  moralists  in  any  age  have  been  found  ready  to  claim 
that  those  popular  sayings  which  praise  the  benefits  of  un- 
truthfulness to  the  seeker  for  the  goods  of  life  have  any 
standing  at  the  bar  of  a  refined  moral  consciousness.  We 
have  here,  then,  in  another  form,  a  question  of  casuistry, 
a  problem  arising  from  a  seeming  conflict  of  duties. 


VIKTUES  OF  THE  JUDGMENT  309 

6.  Once  more,  there  undoubtedly  is  always  a  certain  feel- 
ing of  moral  degradation  attaching  itself  to  the  personality 
of  one  who,  for  any  reason,  however  praiseworthy  the 
reason  in  itself  may  be,  has  told  a  lie.  The  more  exalted 
the  virtue  of  truthfulness  has  been  in  the  estimate  of  such  a 
person,  the  more  violent  the  wrench,  the  more  pitiful  the 
feeling  of  self-depression,  which  follow  yielding  to  the  most 
approved  motives  for  lying.  It  is  the  nun  who  has  never 
lied,  who,  in  Victor  Hugo's  Les  Mis^rables,  becomes  the 
heroine  for  her  self-sacrificing  benevolence  in  telling  just  this 
one  lie  in  the  interests  of  another  person.  The  angels  drop 
a  tear  on  the  record  to  wash  it  away.  Moralists  debate  and 
perhaps  end  by  justifying  it ;  at  any  rate  all  pity  the  doer 
and  perhaps  condone  the  deed.  But  none  glory  in  it  as 
we  glory  in  the  conduct  of  the  man  who  dies  himself  rather 
than  tell  a  base  and  selfish  lie. 

The  man,  then,  who  uses  all  his  powers  of  judgment  in 
the  interests  of  good  conduct,  is  the  man  of  the  Virtuous 
Life,  so  far  as  qualities  of  judgment  can  go.  In  his  estimate 
of  the  ends  of  life,  and  of  the  means  for  their  attainment, 
he  is  wise.  In  his  apportionment  of  the  goods  and  evils  of 
life  to  the  different  individual  selves  with  whom  he  has  rela- 
tions, he  is  just.  In  his  own  mental  attitude  of  judgment 
toward  all  the  facts  and  principles  of  reality,  he  is  true. 
Being  wise,  and  just,  and  true,  in  all  matters  of  judgment, 
he  is  the  good  man  whom  the  universal  moral  consciousness 
of  his  fellows  must  approbate  and  esteem  "  worthy  of  being 
treated  accordingly. " 


CHAPTER  XIII 

VIRTUES  OF  FEELING:  KINDNESS,  SYMPATHY,  ETC. 

The  virtues  of  the  class  which  await  consideration  differ 
in  some  important  respects  from  those  of  the  two  classes 
which  have  already  been  discussed.  The  differences  are,  for 
the  most  part,  due  to  two  causes ;  first,  to  the  character  of 
the  psychological  source  or  mainspring  of  these  virtues ;  and 
second,  to  the  relation  which  the  virtues  themselves,  consid- 
ered as  forms  of  conduct,  sustain  to  the  individual's  social  en- 
vironment. Certain  modes  of  behavior  originate  mainly  in 
the  affectional  and  sentimental  nature  of  man  ("  the  heart," 
das  GemutK)  ;  and  these  modes  of  behavior,  coming  under  the 
guidance  of  judgment  and  the  control  of  the  will,  institute  and 
sustain  a  great  variety  of  powerful  and  valuable  relations,  of  a 
general  character  called  friendly^  among  men.  Such  virtues 
are,  therefore,  pre-eminently  social  in  the  narrower  mean- 
ing of  the  word.  I  say  in  the  narrower  meaning  of  the  word 
social ;  for  we  have  already  seen  that,  in  the  broader  and  truer 
meaning  of  the  same  word,  there  neither  are,  nor  can  be,  any 
virtues  or  vices  which  are  not  social. 

It  should  be  observed,  first,  that  the  affectional  and  senti- 
mental origin  of  this  class  of  virtues  makes  difficult,  if  not 
quite  impossible,  any  clear  definition  of  their  characteristic 
marks.  It  is  now,  for  example,  almost  universally  acknowl- 
edged in  the  ethically  more  highly  developed  communities, 
that  kindness  is  due  to  men  generally,  and  that  it  is  to  be 
morally  approbated  and  deemed  worthy  of  reward  for  its 
meritoriousness.  But  what  is  it  to  be  kind  ?  The  feeling  to 
which  one  must  appeal  in  order  to  get  any  basic  fact  in 


VIRTUES   OF   FEELING  811 

human  experience  for  an  answer  to  such  a  question  as  this, 
does  not  admit  of  definition.  It  is  what  it  is,  as  feeling  ;  and 
to  know  what  this  particular  feeling  really  is,  it  is  necessary 
that  it  should  actually  be  felt.  But  the  theory  of  morals  as 
applied  to  the  description  of  every  cardinal  virtue  refuses  to 
regard  mere  feeling  as  coming  up  to  the  full  standard  of  those 
characteristics  that  are  required  of  every  claimant  to  the  title. 
This  theory  very  promptly  and  properly  introduces  a  distinc- 
tion between  merely  having  kindly  feeling  and  being  truly 
kind,  —  or  exercising  the  full-orbed  grace  of  virtuous  kindness. 
For  such  kindness,  judgment  is  necessary ;  and,  as  well,  the 
volition  which,  as  it  were,  appropriates  and  makes  the  Selfs 
very  own,  the  spontaneous  kindly  feeling.  "  Good  nature,"  for 
example,  is  a  potent  and  praiseworthy  source  of  virtuous  con- 
duct ;  but  he  who  good-naturedly  tosses  a  coin  to  a  beggar 
is  not,  as  a  matter  of  course,  virtuous,  —  especially,  if  he 
owes  that  coin  to  his  family  or  to  some  other  cause.  It  is 
necessary  that  the  natural  feeling  of  kindness  should  be  vol- 
untary and  subjected  to  rational  judgment  in  order  to  convert 
it  into  the  cardinal  yet  qualified  virtue  whicli  it  may  become. 
That  there  are  natural  feelings  of  kindness,  sympathy,  be- 
nevolence, and  self-sacrificing  love,  scarcely  need  be  ques- 
tioned anew  at  the  present  time.  Aristotle  was,  like  all  the 
ancient  Greek  and  Latin  world,  far  enough  from  recognizing 
the  highest  form  of  the  virtues  of  this  class,  such  as  the  en- 
thusiasm of  humanity,  the  principled  love  of  all  mankind. 
But  he  was  too  keen  and  observing  a  psychologist  not  to 
notice  how  "  Love  seems  to  be  implanted  by  nature  in  the 
parent  towards  the  offspring,  and  in  the  offspring  towards  the 
parent,  not  only  among  men  but  also  among  birds  and  most 
animals  ;  and  in  those  of  the  same  race  toward  one  another, 
among  men  especially  —  for  which  reason  we  commend  those 
who  love  their  fellow-men.  And  when  one  travels  one  may 
see  how  man  is  always  akin  to  and  dear  to  man."  ^    That 

1  Nic.  Eth.,  Vni,  i,  3. 


812  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

outcome  of  sensationalism  and  egoism  in  psychology  which 
prevailed  at  one  time  among  certain  English  and  French 
writers  on  ethics,  and  which  thought  to  show  that  all  these 
obviously  kindly,  sympathetic  and  friendly  forms  of  human 
feeling  are  only  sly  and  indirect  forms  of  selfishness,  and  that 
the  different  species  of  conduct  to  which  the  feelings  give  rise 
are  only  concealed  ways  of  seeking  one's  own  good,  —  jejune 
and  unproductive  as  it  always  was  —  is  now  so  deservedly  ex- 
tinct as  to  require  only  a  passing  reference.  It  is  interesting 
to  remark,  however,  how  the  successors  of  this  psychological 
system  are  at  present  among  those  most  interested  to  make 
out  that  certain  spontaneous  feelings  belonging  to  our  com- 
mon human  nature  are  distinctively  (and  even  exclusively) 
altruistic.  Indeed,  "  sympathy  "  is  the  term  which  some  of 
these  writers  employ  as  fit  to  summarize  all  those  impulses 
of  humanity  in  which  the  social  virtues  have  their  origin  and 
their  support. 

Kindness,  sympathy,  and  various  forms  of  affection  and 
friendship  undoubtedly  belong  by  birthright  to  the  nature  of 
man.  They  are  as  essential  impulses  in  his  soul  as  are  the 
impulses  to  anger,  fear,  pride,  and  jealousy.  Indeed,  the  two 
classes  of  impulses,  when  one  attempts  to  classify  them  as 
two,  and  apart,  appear  so  to  interpenetrate,  modify  each  other, 
and  fuse  together  in  complex  emotional  states,  as  to  be  prac- 
tically indistinguishable,  if  considered  as  furnishing  motives 
to  deeds  and  courses  of  conduct.  The  affection  of  the  sexes, 
for  example,  often  manifests  itself  as  jealousy ;  and,  indeed, 
in  not  a  few  instances  it  feeds  upon  this  passion.  Much 
anger  and  pride  are  sympathetic,  and  belong  to  the  social  life 
of  the  community,  whether  domestic,  tribal,  or  national. 
The  various  affections  of  family,  tribe,  and  state  foster  no 
little  anger  and  pride.  To  be  proud,  without  sufficient  reason, 
of  the  object  of  our  love,  is  quite  as  natural  as  to  love  that 
which  ministers  to  our  pride.  And  there  is  no  fiercer,  as 
well  as  more  rational  anger,  than  that  which  burns  against 


VIRTUES  OF  FEELING  313 

the  person  who  attacks  a  beloved  member  of  one's  own  social 
or  friendly  alliance.  These  kindly  outgoings  of  the  human 
spirit  belong  as  truly  to  man  in  a  ''state  of  nature*'  (if  by 
a  state  of  nature  be  meant  any  condition  in  which  human 
existence  is  historically  recognizable,  or  even  conceivable  in 
view  of  an  accurate  psychological  analysis)  as  do  any  of  his 
passions,  emotions,  or  desires. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  cannot  be  denied  that,  in  some  re- 
spects, the  virtues  of  the  heart  are  not  so  fundamental  and 
essential  to  mere  existence,  or  to  the  earliest  stages  of  man's 
moral  evolution,  as  are  the  cardinal  virtues  of  the  will  and  of 
the  judgment.  Courage,  a  certain  amount  of  temperance  and 
of  wisdom,  and  some  rude  justice,  can  perhaps  less  easily  be 
dispensed  with,  when  man  is  making  his  first  start  toward  the 
ideal  of  virtuous  life,  than  can  kindness,  generosity,  or  the  love 
of  man  as  man.  To  be  sure,  one  cannot  fail  to  recognize  a 
certain  large  truth  in  Aristotle's  ^  declaration :  "  If  citizens  be 
friends,  they  have  no  need  of  justice,  but  though  they  be  just, 
they  need  friendship  or  love  also  ;  indeed,  the  completest 
realization  of  justice  seems  to  be  the  realization  of  friendship 
or  love  also."  But  even  the  truth  of  this  declaration  seems 
to  confirm  the  truth  of  what  has  just  been  said.  Man  cannot 
exercise  the  virtue  of  the  higher  justice  without  rendering  to 
other  men  that  kindly,  sympathetic,  and  friendly  service 
which  is  their  due.  And  friendship  is  needed  to  satisfy  a 
yearning  which  is  native  to  every  human  soul,  —  except,  per- 
haps, the  most  callous  and  degraded.  There  is,  moreover,  a 
profound  and  powerful  ethical  truth  in  the  declaration  that  — 
"  Love  is  the  fulfilling  of  the  law,"  in  its  essence  and  its 
entirety.  But  it  is  also  true  that  the  virtues  of  the  heart 
flourish  upon  a  basis  laid  by  the  sterner  and  less  lovable 
virtues  of  courage,  prudence,  and  a  rude  but  sturdy  form  of 
protective  and  retributive  justice. 

It  is   true,  however,  that  some  degree  and  form  of  the 

1  Nic.  Eth.,  VIII,  i,  4. 


314  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

virtues  of  feeling  is  found  and  appreciated  at  all  the  lower 
levels  of  moral  evolution.  A  certain  prizing,  and  even  a 
relatively  large  amount  of  practice,  of  these  virtues  is  often 
found  among  savage  peoples.  For  no  savages  are  all  the 
while  engaged  in  hating,  killing,  and  abusing  others — in- 
cluding those  of  their  own  household  or  tribe.  Many  savages 
are,  on  the  contrary,  quite  habitually  kind,  generous,  and 
friendly,  not  only  to  those  of  their  own  tribe,  but  also  to 
strangers.  One  of  the  saddest  things  about  the  effect  of 
contact  with  the  evil  representatives  of  peoples  who  have 
attained  an  advance  of  civilization  that  permits  so-called 
"  benevolence  "  largely  to  take  the  place  of  protective  and 
punitive  justice  is  this,  it  too  often  destroys  the  more  simple 
and  confiding  forms  of  friendly  feeling  among  savage  peoples. 
What  M.  Rose  says  is  true  of  his  own  countrymen  with  respect 
to  their  influence  upon  other  savage  virtues  is  too  often  true 
of  so-called  superior  races  generally  in  their  influence  upon 
the  hospitality,  generosity,  and  kindliness  of  inferior  races: 
"  The  people  are  simple  and  confiding  when  we  arrive,  per- 
fidious when  we  leave  them.  Once  sober,  brave,  and  honest, 
we  make  them  drunken,  lazy,  and  finally  thieves.  After 
having  inoculated  them  with  our  vices,  we  employ  these  very 
vices  as  an  argument  for  their  destruction."  ^ 

Among  the  more  warm-blooded  races,  however  low  in  the 
scale  of  civilization,  there  is  usually  a  large  amount  of  the 
various  forms  of  natural  affection.  Even  where  polygamy 
abounds,  or  concubinage  is  most  unrestricted,  affection  be- 
tween the  sexes  is  not  wanting.  Nor  do  abortion,  the  expos- 
ure and  murder  of  children,  and  other  similar  kinds  of  crime 
against  offspring,  do  away  with  that  instinctive  and  powerful 
love  which  binds  the  parent  —  especially  the  mother  —  to  the 
child.  But  particularly  is  hospitality  counted  to  be  essential 
among  the  virtues  of  manhood ;  and  the  ties  of  friendly  feeling 
everywhere  bind  men  together  —  master  and  servant,  chief  and 
1  Quoted  by  Quatrefages,  The  Human  Species,  p.  462. 


VIRTUES  OF  FEELING  315 

retainer,  old  man  and  youth,  tribesman  with  member  of  the 
same  tribe  —  in  a  way  to  mitigate  and  sweeten  the  hardships 
and  cruelties  of  the  struggle  for  existence  and  for  the  posses- 
sion of  the  goods  of  life.  The  Tongan  chiefs,  according  to 
Mariner,  were  familiar  with  the  value  of  "  the  agreeable  and 
happy  feelings  which  a  man  experiences  within  himself  when 
he  does  any  good  action  and  conducts  himself  nobly  and  gen- 
erously as  a  man  ought  to  do."  "  A  good  name  makes  one 
sleep  well "  ;  and  ''  A  lent  knife  does  not  come  back  alone  '* 
(^.  e.,  a  good  deed  is  never  thrown  away),  say  the  Basutos 
of  South  Africa,  —  while  the  lofty  ancient  morality  of  the 
Persians  proclaims  :  "  The  liberal  man  is  the  friend  of  God  "  ; 
and, ''  Practise  liberality,  but  lay  no  stress  on  the  obligation." 
Even  our  own  savage  and  cruel  ancestors  who,  not  many 
generations  ago,  spared  "the  bairn  that  is  on  the  floor"  (is 
born)  only  when  the  father  had  caused  it  to  be  lifted  up, 
prized  the  "  pure  virtue  "  of  hospitality  and  enjoyed  no  little 
of  "  romantic  love  "  in  the  marital  relations  of  the  sexes. 

It  has  already  been  said  that  kindness  as  spontaneous  and 
natural  feeling  cannot  be  further  analyzed  or,  strictly  speak- 
ing, defined ;  but  its  various  manifestations,  as  these  depend 
either  upon  the  social  relations  under  which  the  feeling  comes 
into  play,  or  upon  the  condition  of  the  object  toward  whom 
the  feeling  goes  out,  require  some  separate  mention.  Of 
such  relations  the  following  three  deserve  chiefly  to  be  con- 
sidered :  (1)  the  relations  of  the  family ;  (2)  the  relations  of 
the  tribe,  or  other  form  of  social  community  ;  and  (3)  the 
peculiar  relations  which  come  under  the  term  of  friendship, 
in  the  narrower  meaning  of  this  word.  In  adopting  this 
order  I  do  not  intend  to  raise  the  question  whether  the  family 
or  the  tribe  is  the  oldest  social  organization. 

The  physical  and  mental  constitution  of  man  and  woman 
is  such  that  any  sexual  union,  when  continued  and  repeated, 
necessarily  develops  feelings  either  of  affection  or  of  repul- 
sion.     So  true  is  this  that  it  is  only  under  the   most  un- 


316  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

favorable  conditions,  and  where  sexual  intercourse  is  most 
unregulated  by  law  or  custom,  and  most  brutish,  that  the 
human  pair  do  not  feel  the  happy  impulse  to  some  degree  of 
distinguishing  kindly  feeling  toward  each  other.  Were  it 
not  that  so  many  other  influences,  both  among  savage  and 
highly  civilized  peoples,  tend  to  counteract  this  impulse,  it 
would  probably  be  quite  generally  true  that  husbands  and 
wives  would  love  each  other,  —  and  this,  whether  the  affec- 
tion were  left  to  follow  upon  marriage  or  were  made  to 
precede  it.  Mothers  naturally  tend  to  feel  a  peculiar  kind- 
ness toward  their  offspring;  and  amongst  the  cruellest  of 
savages  the  pride  and  affection  of  the  father  in  his  son, 
whenever  this  son  has  grown  to  an  age  to  reciprocate  the 
simpler  forms  of  intercourse,  manifest  themselves  in  not  a  few 
important  ways.  Members  of  the  same  family  —  brothers  and 
sisters,  daughters-in-law  and  mothers-in-law,  etc.  —  doubtless 
quarrel  frequently  and  bitterly  enough  even  in  the  most  re- 
fined and  Christian  communities  ;  but,  after  all,  membership 
in  the  same  family,  however  the  family  may  be  constituted 
and  however  much  its  confines  may  be  enlarged,  is  the  one 
form  of  affection  which  ties  society  together  at  its  very  base, 
so  to  say.  Witness  the  amazing  strength  of  the  mixed  and 
ill-defined  Hindu  family,  both  for  offensive  and  for  defensive 
purposes,  in  spite  of  the  wide-spreading  evil  of  family  jealous- 
ies, bickerings,  and  strifes.  In  China,  too,  the  cement  which 
unites  the  various  heterogeneous  interests  of  the  social  fabric  is 
a  sort  of  loyal  affection  for  the  family  and  the  clan.  I  have 
heard  it  said  by  one  of  those  most  familiar  with  Chinese  char- 
acter that  one  can  never  judge  the  individual  by  himself  as 
either  so  good  or  so  bad  as  he  seems  to  be.  He  is  always, 
in  his  most  fundamental  and  effective  characteristics,  a  mem- 
ber of  the  family  or  clan.  In  spite  of  the  large  amount 
of  insincerity,  jealousy,  and  even  cruelty  which  are  prevalent 
among  the  different  members  of  the  same  family  or  clan, 
*' filial  piety,"  as  they  understand  it,  continues  to  be  both  the- 


VIRTUES  OF  FEELING  317 

oreticallj  and  practically  a  force  which  mitigates  the  selfish 
struggle  for  existence  among  the  Chinese.  Every  one  familiar 
with  the  history  of  "  Old  Japan  "  knows  how  much  of  virtuous 
conduct,  in  spite  of  exceedingly  loose  notions  of  the  morality 
of  sexual  relations,  came  from  the  reciprocal  affections  of 
those  who  bore  the  same  family  name,  or  who  owed  allegiance 
to  the  same  Daimyo. 

To  ethnology  and  the  history  of  ethical  development  the 
student  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct  may  confidently  appeal 
to  show  how  valuable,  and  how  universal  and  effective,  are 
these  kindlier  affections,  and  the  virtues  which  grow  out  of 
them,  among  the  different  tribes  and  other  subdivisions  of  the 
human  race.  When  the  common  social  life  and  social  inter- 
ests have  spread  themselves  over  the  larger  and  ever  widening 
circles  of  men,  the  power  of  the  friendly  feelings,  in  general, 
is  yet  more  obvious.  It  is  never  merely  selfish  interest,  and 
rarely,  if  ever,  the  merely  natural  reaction  of  courageous 
anger  against  attack,  which  enlists  the  members  of  the  same 
tribe  or  larger  community  in  a  common  cause.  It  is  rather 
also  because  they  have  sympathy  with  one  another ;  because 
even  they,  in  some  rude  and  imperfect  fashion,  obey  the 
Divine  command,  as  brethren  to  love  one  another.  The  idea 
of  brotherhood,  however,  extends  only  to  the  one  bound  up  in 
the  same  bundle,  in  respect  of  his  notions,  customs,  language, 
loves,  and  even  prejudices  and  hates.  But,  alas  !  how  few  in 
the  most  Christian  nations  have  really  any  higher  conception 
of  the  brotherhood  of  man  than  just  this ! 

There  is  something  yet  more  imposing  and  in  some  sort 
mysterious  about  the  love  of  friendship  in  the  more  restricted 
and  positive  meaning  of  this  word.  This  peculiar  form  of 
love,  although  it  is  by  no  means  identical  with  the  affection 
which  ties  together  the  members  of  the  same  family,  clan, 
or  tribe,  may  be  added  to  domestic  or  tribal  affection,  and  so 
constitute  a  double  cord  for  human  souls.  Where  it  exists 
between  husband  and  wife,  it  may  outlast,  and  outstrip  in  self- 


318  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

denying  service  and  in  mutual  reward,  the  relations  peculiar 
to  the  two  sexes;  where  it  binds  brothers  and  sisters  to- 
gether, it  is  a  much  more  durable  and  purer  bond  than  mere 
consanguinity.  Where  it  exists  in  its  noblest  form,  as 
between  good  souls  who  desire  to  have,  and  are  able  to  have, 
suitable  converse  with  each  other,  and  whose  motive  for  love 
is  pure,  friendship  is  the  finest  and  most  elevating  of  human 
affections.  The  mysterious  nature  of  this  bond,  as  respects 
both  its  origin  and  also  the  character  of  the  persons  between 
whom  it  can  properly  exist,  or  exist  in  fact  at  all,  has  been 
the  subject  of  debate  for  centuries.  Aristotle  was  forced  to 
say :  ^  "  There  are  not  a  few  differences  of  opinion  about  the 
matter."  In  his  day  some  said  the  principle  of  choice  is 
"Like  to  like,"  as  "Crow  to  crow;"  but  others  even  then 
reminded  the  inquirer  how  "Potter  quarrels  with  potter,  and 
carpenter  with  carpenter"  (Kal  Kepa^ev<i  Kepafiel  Koreet  koI 

TeKTOVb    T6KTC0v), 

With  all  the  psychological  analysis  which  has  been  given 
to  the  causation  of  friendship,  and  all  the  instruction  and 
exhortation  which  the  duty  of  carefully  choosing  one's 
friends  has  very  properly  received,  little  more  is  known 
about  the  subject  than  was  recognized  in  the  writings  of 
Plato  and  Aristotle.  The  former  makes  Socrates  say  at  the 
close  of  the  Lysis :  "  Here  is  a  jest ;  you  two  boys,  and  I,  an 
old  boy,  who  would  fain  be  one  of  you,  imagine  ourselves  to 
be  friends,  and  we  have  not  as  yet  been  able  to  discover  what 
is  a  friend." 

In  spite  of  the  truth  of  Jowett's  remark  ^  that  Socrates 
allows  himself  "  to  be  carried  away  by  a  sort  of  eristic  or 
illogical  logic,"  the  notions  which  "appear  to  be  struggling 
or  balancing  in  the  mind  of  Socrates  "  are  not  yet  easy  to 
harmonize:  namely,  "First,  the  sense  that  friendship  arises 
out  of  human  needs  and  wants;  Secondly,  that  the  higher 

1  Nic.  Eth.,  Vm,  i,  6. 

2  Introduction  to  the  Lysis,  The  Dialogues  of  Plato,  vol.  L 


VIRTUES  OF  FEELING  319 

form  or  ideal  of  friendship  exists  only  for  the  sake  of  the 
good. "  What  more  does  this  amount  to,  however,  than  the 
opinion  that,  if  one  considers  this  form  of  friendly  feeling 
between  human  beings,  one  finds  it  capable  of  becoming 
either  a  vicious  and  injurious  or  a  virtuous  and  most  benefi- 
cent form  of  conduct.  It  is  also  a  form  of  conduct  which  is 
all  the  more  powerful  for  weal  or  for  woe  in  the  development 
of  morals,  whether  in  the  case  of  the  individual  or  of  society, 
because  it  so  grasps  hold  of  all  the  springs  of  action  and 
brings  them  all  to  bear  together  either  toward,  or  away  from, 
the  ideal  of  the  Virtuous  Life.  Witness  the  frequency  in  all 
times  with  which  friends  have  sacrificed  themselves  for  one 
another,  whether  in  a  good  cause  or  in  a  bad  one,  have  com- 
mitted suicide  together,  or  have  cheerfully  laid  down  their 
lives  in  common  devotion  to  the  same  end. 

Satisfactory  oif-hand  explanations  cannot  be  given  as  to 
why  two  human  beings  come  to  acknowledge  the  ties  of 
friendship  in  their  more  or  less  binding  form.  Learned  and 
unlearned,  master  and  slave,  royalty  and  peasant,  man  and 
man,  or  man  and  woman,  or  woman  and  woman,  youth  and 
youth,  or  youth  and  age,  those  of  kindred  blood  and  common 
country,  and  those  as  alien  as  possible  in  blood  and  of 
countries  hostile  to  each  other,  have  become  faithful  and 
devoted  friends.  For  the  forces  in  human  nature  that  induce 
friendship  are  an  exceedingly  complex  affair;  and  whether 
in  any  particular  case  the  existence  of  intense  friendly  feel- 
ing is  due  chiefly  to  contiguity,  or  to  likeness  of  interests  and 
tastes,  or  to  the  need  of  being  supplemented,  or  to  the  quite 
common  yearning  for  appreciation  or  for  affection,  or  to 
something  that  is  either  too  fortuitous  or  too  profound  in 
character  or  in  circumstance  to  be  reached  by  external  in- 
spection, can  never  be  determined  a  priori.  Nor  should 
much  importance  be  attached  to  rules  for  defining  the  duty 
of  the  individual  in  respect  to  the  making  of  friendships;  — 
especially,  perhaps,  if  such  rules  are  conceived  in  a  spirit 


320  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

too  narrow  and  Puritanic.  For  the  casuistry  of  friendship, 
too,  is  very  complex.  Bad  characters  are  by  no  means 
always  helped,  even  if  they  can  be  induced  to  form  a  sort  of 
self-interested  friendship  with  good  men.  Characters  with 
bad  tendencies  already  established  may  be  either  improved  or 
injured  by  unselfish  friendships  with  others  not  much  better 
than  themselves.  Good  men  are  undoubtedly  sometimes 
made  worse  by  friendships  with  the  vicious;  but,  on  the 
other  hand,  there  is  no  so  potent  human  influence  to  make 
the  vicious  better  as  to  make  them  feel  the  friendship  —  not 
the  formal  "  benevolence  "  or  the  so-called  "  charity  "  of  the 
good.  In  a  word,  the  beneficial  or  deleterious  results  of 
friendships  depend  in  general  upon  the  relations  which  the 
friendly  alliances  themselves  sustain  to  the  pursuit  of  the 
ideal  of  the  Virtuous  Life. 

Among  the  forms  taken  by  kindly  feeling,  as  dependent 
upon  the  condition  of  its  object,  in  the  lower  stages  of  man's 
ethical  development,  the  more  prominent  are  Hospitality 
and  Pity.  The  former  is  undoubtedly  partly  of  a  utilitarian 
origin  and  character,  and  partly  connected  with  the  gratifi- 
cation of  either  a  noble  or  an  ignoble  pride.  It  is  in  eating 
and  drinking  together  that  men's  friendly  feelings  are  apt 
to  be  aroused  and  enhanced,  and  their  hatred  cooled  and 
ameliorated.  Quite  universally  the  stranger  and  even  the 
enemy,  when  received  as  a  guest  to  the  dwelling-place,  tent 
or  house,  is  considered  to  have  the  most  sacred  claims  to 
protection  from  injury.  And,  for  whatever  motive  (the 
honor  of  Jehovah,  or  the  good  of  his  people,  not  excepted) 
to  do  as  Jael  did  to  Sisera  (Judges  iv.)  is  a  most  heinous 
crime.  When  the  host  is  himself  poor  and  needy,  he  feels 
the  virtue  of  his  hospitality  all  the  more  keenly  because  he 
is  sharing  with  his  guest  the  small  portion  of  food  and  the 
meagre  lodging  which  is  the  just  and  rightful  property  only 
of  his  own  family.  But  where  the  host  is  rich  or  princely, 
a  liberal  and  even  magnificent  display  of  hospitality,   al- 


VIRTUES  OF  FEELING  321 

though  it  does  not  enhance  the  virtuousness  of  the  friendly 
feeling,  ministers  to  a  not  wholly  ignoble  kind  of  pride. 
Not  to  treat  one's  guest  according  to  one's  ability  to  comfort 
and  to  please  him  would  be,  in  such  a  case,  a  positive  and 
mean  vice.  As  regards  the  practice  of  this  virtue  also  I 
may  refer  to  ethnic  and  historical  studies  to  show  in  de- 
tail the  many  curious  and  interesting  customs  which  have 
grown  up  in  various  communities  from  the  root  of  this 
friendly  feeling;  and,  as  well,  what  great  benefits  have 
accrued  from  the  ancient  and  wide-spreading  practice  of 
hospitality,  in  the  way  of  ameliorating  the  condition  of  men 
and  of  cultivating  the  spirit  of  humanity  and  love.  Even 
among  savages  this  virtue  is  esteemed.  As  Wundt  has  said :  ^ 
"In  the  Greek  world  this  high  regard  for  hospitality  goes 
back  to  the  very  earliest  times.  The  Odyssey  counts  Ulys- 
ses' unrivalled  hospitality  to  the  coming  and  the  departing 
guest  as  one  of  his  chief  virtues. "  The  duties  of  hosts  (f eVot) 
are  placed  by  Aristotle  among  the  virtues  of  "accidental 
friendship.'*  Among  the  Germanic  peoples  Grimm  quotes 
ancient  ordinances  which  imposed  a  penalty  upon  the  house- 
hold who  refused  shelter  and  fireside  to  the  traveller.  "  Even 
if  the  guest  had  slain  the  brother  of  his  host "  —  no  matter ; 
he  must  come  and  go  in  safety.  This  hospitality  was  in 
time  extended  so  as  to  cover  the  travelling  merchant;  it 
thus  became  the  early  protector  of  commerce.  Of  Chaucer's 
franklin  we  read  that  his 

"...  table  dormant  in  his  halle  alway 
Stood  redy  covered  al  the  longe  day." 

This  virtuous  friendly  feeling,  when  combined  with  a  sense 
of  honor,  has  led  to  such  heroic  deeds  as  those  of  the 
Gepidae,  who  refused  to  give  up  a  guest  at  the  command  of 
Justinian  and  so  suffered  themselves  to  be  ruined.     At  the 

1  Ethics,  I,  p  286,  f. ;  and  comp.  Buchholz,  Homerische  Realen,  II,  2,  pp. 
38  fE. ;  and  III,  2,  pp.  361  f .,  as  cited  by  Wundt. 

21 


322  PHILOSOPHY   OF  CONDUCT 

present  time,  in  the  more  civilized  communities,  the  preva- 
lent commercial  spirit  has  produced  everywhere  the  attitude 
which  makes  the  traveller  the  legitimate  object  of  every 
kind  of  plunder;  while  the  progress  of  the  humanitarian 
spirit  consigns  the  tramp  either  to  the  station-house  or  to 
the  "  charities'  home."  This  may  be  just;  it  is  perhaps 
inevitable.  But  it  should  not  lead  the  student  of  morals 
either  to  flatter  unjustly  his  own  generation,  or  to  overlook 
the  part  which  the  ruder  forms  of  the  virtue  of  hospitality 
have  formerly  played  in  the  development  both  of  commerce 
and  of  benevolence. 

Pity  is  the  form  which  kindly  feeling  takes  when  its 
object  is  suffering.  The  feeling  of  pity  is  natural ;  and  in 
spite  of  the  curse  of,  and  almost  the  necessity  for,  unspeak- 
able cruelties  in  all  the  earlier  stages  of  the  evolution  of  the 
race,  there  are  never  and  nowhere  wanting  traces  of  this 
feeling.  The  physically  lower  and  savage  peoples  un- 
doubtedly show  an  astonishing  indifference  to  suffering. 
Physiologically  considered,  they  are  relatively  incapable  of 
suffering;  they  are  from  their  earliest  existence  inured  to 
bear  it,  and  to  take  pride  in  concealing  or  even  in  despising 
it.  Of  this  hardened  attitude  toward  the  sufferings  of  others, 
which  is  largely  conditioned  upon  the  absence  of  nerves  and 
the  custom  of  seeing  and  bearing  what  to  more  highly 
sensitive  nervous  organizations  would  be  intolerable,  the 
Chinese  are  perhaps  the  most  conspicuous  example  among 
civilized  peoples.  But  where  the  human  heart  becomes 
sensitive  to  the  pain  or  misfortune  of  others,  unless  selfish- 
ness or  hatred  interpose  to  pervert  or  alter  the  natural 
feeling,  pity  is  the  emotion  which  is  spontaneous  for  man 
toward  man,  and  even  toward  the  animals.  Anger,  jealousy, 
desire  for  revenge,  as  well  as  insensibility,  prevent  the  feel- 
ing and  its  expression.  The  cultivated  virtues  of  courage, 
wisdom,  and  justice,  not  infrequently  have  to  control  and 
divert  it.     But  pity  itself,  in  turn,  powerfully  modifies  them. 


VIRTUES   OF  FEELING  823 

And  when,  chastened  with  wisdom  and  tempered  by  justice, 
the  virtue  of  pity  takes  its  highest  possible  form,  it  is  one 
of  the  most  divine,  as  it  is  always  one  of  the  most  difficult, 
of  all  the  human  virtues. 

The  use  of  the  word  Sympathy  suggests  a  conception 
which  seems  too  comprehensive  and  fundamental  to  fit  well 
any  particular  form  of  virtuous  conduct.  Indeed,  the  prin- 
ciple of  sympathy,  when  joined  with  the  principle  of  imita- 
tion,  gives  the  psychological  explanation  of  a  considerable 
portion  of  the  experiences  witnessed  in  the  earlier  stages 
of  the  ethical  development  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race. 
In  action,  whether  merely  expressive  or  designed  to  accom- 
plish some  ulterior  end,  men  imitate  each  other ;  in  feeling, 
whether  their  own  interests  are  quite  directly  or  only  in  an 
imaginary  way  involved,  men  sympathize  with  each  other. 
Imitation  and  sympathy  co-operate  with  each  other  to  impel 
in  certain  common  directions  all  the  emotional  impulses  and 
motor  activities  of  groups  of  men.  Thus  are  secured  the 
more  spontaneous  and  unthinking  forms  of  conduct  common 
to  considerable  multitudes.  All  wise,  just,  and  truly 
benevolent  co-operation  with  one's  fellows,  in  good  causes, 
represents  a  later  stage  of  ethical  development;  but  it  is 
rendered  by  his  nature  inevitable  that  man,  on  learning  to 
interpret  and  to  employ  his  motor  powers  through  the  prin- 
ciple of  imitation,  should  be  instructed  and  quickened  in  all 
the  different  forms  of  sympathetic  feeling  with  others. 

Indeed,  by  a  not  unwarrantable  and  suggestive  extension 
in  the  application  of  this  principle  it  is  possible  to  make 
sympathy  serve  as  the  explanation  of  all  the  so-called  altru- 
istic side  of  human  nature,  and  of  the  whole  extent  of  the 
foundations  upon  which  human  society  rests.  Among  the 
lower  animals  similar  influences  seem  to  prevail.  The 
"  feeling  of  the  kind, "  the  feeling  with  the  species,  is  every- 
where a  generic  rather  than  a  particular  form  of  feeling.  It 
is  that  broad  yet  subtile  emotion  of  kinship  which,  while  it 


324  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

is  no  one  specific  form  of  emotion,  is  the  emotional  basis 
for  all  the  specific  forms.  If  ants  will  not  tolerate  ants  of 
another  hill,  or  bees  those  of  another  hive,  because  they  do 
not  smell  or  otherwise  seem  like  those  of  their  own  kindred, 
the  sympathetic  attractions  and  repulsions  of  the  higher 
animals,  and  especially  of  human  beings,  are  more  complex 
and  decisive  as  to  terms  of  friendly  intercourse.  Where 
the  physical  features  of  different  peoples,  or  their  habits  of 
dress  and  of  behavior,  or  their  manner  of  gesture  and  their 
written  and  spoken  language,  are  markedly  unlike,  it  is  the 
more  difficult  to  persuade  both  mind  and  heart  that  this 
feeling  of  sympathy  is  legitimate  —  not  to  say,  virtuous.  A 
monkey,  or  a  fox,  or  a  bulldog,  or  some  one  of  another 
species  quite  different  from  one's  own ;— why  ought  one  to 
sympathize  with  it  as  tliough  it  were  of  one's  own  kinship  ? 
Thus,  even  until  the  present  time  and  in  spite  of  all  the 
experience  of  travel  and  commerce,  and  all  the  instructions 
of  art  and  of  philosophy,  and  all  the  commands  and  exhorta- 
tions of  religion,  the  Oriental  and  the  Occidental  fail  to 
exercise  the  virtue  of  sympathy  with  each  other ;  and  black, 
white,  and  yellow.  Englishman,  Frenchman,  German,  and 
Russian,  find  it  difficult  to  extend  over  one  another  the 
mantle  of  a  just  and  sweet  kindliness  of  feeling. 

But  in  the  narrow  confines  within  which  the  natural  feel- 
ing of  kinship  —  sympathy,  in  the  broader  meaning  of  the 
word  —  exercises  its  legitimate  power,  the  specific  virtue  of 
sympathy  springs  up  and  extends  itself  toward  all  those  who 
share  the  title  to  be  considered  of  one  kind.  And  as  men 
come  to  know  that  man  is  essentially  the  same  on  whatever 
hemisphere  you  find  him,  and  of  whatever  color,  and  to 
whatever  nationality  his  allegiance  may  belong,  the  virtue 
of  sympathy  follows  in  the  path  of  the  natural  feeling  of 
kinship.  Thus  this  virtue  leads  the  way  to  the  supreme 
form  of  virtuous  feeling, — namely,  a  courageous,  just,  and 
wise  benevolence. 


VIRTUES  OF   FEELING  325 

The  natural  feeling  of  sympathy  tends  to  bring  men  into 
accord  along  all  the  different  lines  of  the  particular  forms 
of  feeling.  I  have  already  remarked  that  anger,  fear,  pride, 
etc.,  are  subject,  in  general,  to  the  influence  of  the  principle 
of  sympathy  (see  p.  75  f.).  The  same  thing  is,  of  course,  true 
of  pity,  love,  admiration,  joy,  hope,  and  all  the  loftier  and 
finer  sentiments  and  aspirations  of  humanity.  To  "  rejoice 
with  them  that  do  rejoice  "  is  as  truly  a  mark  of  sympathy  as 
to  "  weep  with  them  that  weep. "  Indeed,  there  is  a  certain 
truth  in  Perty's  remark*  that  "it  is  no  fine  feature  of 
our  nature  that  most  men  are  much  more  inclined  to  sympa- 
thetic suffering  with  others'  misfortune  than  to  sympathetic 
joy  with  others'  good  fortune. "  As  respects  both  the  psy- 
chological nature  of  this  virtue  and  also  the  cultivation  and 
exercise  of  it,  the  feeling  of  sympathy  depends  largely  upon 
a  cultivated  imagination.  One  can  feel  with  others  only 
when  one  is  able  to  imagine  how  others  feel.  And  here  is 
one  of  the  several  points  at  which  the  feeling  comes,  so  to 
say,  into  relation  to  the  will.  For  the  cultivation  of  the 
imagination  so  as  to  be  able  to  "put  one's  self  into  the 
other's  place,"  if  done  with  a  view  thus  to  realize  the  ideal 
of  virtuous  living,  is  itself  a  virtuous  action;  and  it  also 
makes  possible  the  virtue  of  a  more  complete  sympathy. 
Nor  can  the  connection  of  such  culture  of  mind  and  heart 
with  the  virtue  of  justice  be  long  kept  out  of  sight.  Without 
the  virtue  of  sympathy  the  "higher  justice"  is  impossible. 

That  the  natural  feeling  of  kinship,  the  feeling  of  the 
species,  develops  among  the  rudest  savages  into  the  virtue 
of  sympathy,  there  can  be  no  doubt.  The  range  of  the  virtue 
may  be  narrow,  the  limitations  obvious,  but  the  reality  of 
the  manifestation  is  unmistakable.  "  Primitive  man,"  says 
Wundt,2  "can  be  sympathetic,  helpful,  even  self-sacrificing, 
when  his  comrade  is  in  danger :  he  is  incapable  of  an  action 
whose  results  will  not  benefit  some  one  of  his  acquaintance, 

1  Anthropologie,  I,  p.  298.  2  Ethics,  I,  p.  263  f. 


326  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

still  more  of  conduct  that  does  not  aim  to  assist  any  indi- 
vidual whatever."  But  this  concrete,  personal  character  of 
the  earlier  manifestation  belongs  to  all  the  virtues ;  and  the 
reasons  for  it  will  appear  more  clearly  hereafter.  It  is 
largely,  however,  caused  by  the  narrow  range  of  interests  to 
which  the  so-called  "  primitive  man  "  is  susceptible,  and  by 
the  limited  character  of  his  knowledge  and  the  imperfect 
working  of  his  imagination. 

Out  of  a  half-savage  hospitality  toward  the  stranger,  pity 
toward  the  suffering,  and  sympathy  with  those  most  closely 
kin,  the  noble  and  inclusive  virtue  of  benevolence  has  been 
evolved.  The  influences  which  have  chiefly  contributed  to 
this  evolution  are  two :  philosophy  and  art,  on  the  one  hand, 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  religion  —  especially  Christianity, 
Thus  as  the  range  of  human  acquaintanceship  extends,  the 
reasons,  motives,  and  sanctions  for  the  extension  of  the 
natural  feelings  of  friendliness  and  sympathy  are  provided; 
and  what  is  with  primitive  and  savage  man  possible  only 
over  an  exceedingly  narrow  circle  of  his  fellow-beings,  on 
account  both  of  his  ignorance  and  of  his  own  low  grade  of 
moral  development,  becomes  possible  over  the  ever  widening 
circle  of  mankind,  and  even  of  other  personal  existences  in 
whose  capacity  for  fellowship  man  comes  to  believe. 

Philosophy  and  art  have  undoubtedly  rendered  a  real  ser- 
vice in  the  evolution  of  that  supreme  virtue  of  the  feeling 
which  is  called  Benevolence.  This  service  has  been  accom- 
plished by  elevating  and  expanding  the  conception  which 
man  holds  of  his  own  nature  and  destiny.  Philosophy  and 
art  have  been  powerful  historical  forces  to  teach  mankind 
to  recognize  the  better  and  the  worthier  Self.  They  have 
always,  on  the  whole,  emphasized  the  permanent  values  of 
life.  True,  they  have  in  not  a  few  instances  ministered 
to  what  is  sensuous  and  opposed  to  the  interests  of  moral 
development;  but  religion  has  also  —  even  more  frequently 
than  philosophy  and  art  —  had  this  same  ethically  degrading 


VIRTUES  OF  FEELING  327 

effect.  For  a  degraded  ethical  condition  will  pull  down  and 
abuse  the  ministrations  of  all  the  otherwise  illumining  and 
elevating  energies  of  man.  But,  in  general,  and  in  the 
historic  process  of  unfolding  human  life,  all  these  three  — 
philosophy,  art,  and  religion  —  have  powerfully  co-operated 
to  raise  and  reinforce  the  ideals  of  the  spirit. 

Philosophy,  as  soon  as  it  applies  its  instrument  of  reflec- 
tive thinking  to  man  himself  —  his  origin,  nature,  and  prob- 
able destiny  —  begins  everywhere  the  search  for  the  uni- 
versal and  the  permanent.  It  seeks  the  universal  and  the 
permanent  amidst  the  individual  and  changeable  facts  of 
experience;  and  it  finds  what  it  seeks.  It  makes  the 
discovery  that  slaves,  strangers,  and  even  barbarians  are 
also  men;  it  discerns  in  them  also  those  marks  that 
are  common  to  the  members  of  the  philosopher's  own 
household  and  nation  and  circle  of  friends.  Before  this 
conception  of  man  as  man  has  been  formed  in  some  intelli- 
gent and  comprehensive  fashion,  the  spirit  of  kindliness 
and  sympathy  has  no  sure  dwelling-place.  It  wanders  like 
the  dove  over  the  face  of  the  dreary  waters  and  returns, 
tired  out,  to  its  own  little  ark.  Philosophy,  whose  spirit  is 
—  quite  contrary  to  notions  that  are  always  widely  popular 
but  are  based  upon  ignorance  and  prejudice  —  not  proud  and 
exclusive,  but  always  more  genial  and  condescending  than 
that  of  the  unreflecting  crowd,  reveals  man  to  himself  as  a 
being  of  worth.  Philosophy  customarily  estimates  the 
value  of  man  much  higher  than  does  commerce,  or  the  civil 
government,  whose  officers  are  ever  ready  to  sacrifice  the 
multitudes  to  themselves,  or  to  the  popular  opinion.  Even  in 
the  case  of  those  religions  which  have  contributed  so  much 
to  the  awakening  and  spread  of  benevolent  feeling,  it  is  the 
conceptions  of  man's  origin,  nature,  and  destiny,  which  they 
share  with  philosophy,  that  give  to  this  feeling,  and  to  the 
beneficent  works  which  flow  from  the  feeling,  the  sound  and 
permanent  rational  basis  they  possess.     Indeed,  unless  the 


828  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

philosophical  basis  of  any  religion  is  sound  and  its  spirit 
and  efforts  are  directed  to  right  ethical  ends,  that  religion 
increases  hate  rather  than  good  will  among  mankind. 

Through  art  also,  and  especially  in  the  form  of  poetry, 
man  comes  to  a  knowledge  and  appreciation  of  his  own 
higher  selfhood.  The  feelings  awakened  and  nourished  by 
the  poetical  representations  of  those  hopes  and  fears,  those 
interests  and  activities,  those  insights  and  mysteries,  which 
are  the  common  heritage  of  mankind,  tend  forcefully  and 
effectively  toward  the  extension  of  the  friendly  and  sympa- 
thetic side  of  human  nature.  Poetry,  and  in  a  less  degree 
other  forms  of  art,  has  indeed  done  much  to  stir  and  to 
foster  the  warlike  spirit,  the  courage  and  the  enthusiasm 
which  must  become  popular  if  the  tribe  or  the  nation  is 
going  to  engage  heartily  in  strife  against  a  common  foe. 
But  the  war-songs,  like  the  love -songs  and  the  cradle-songs 
of  other  tribes  and  nations,  show  to  us  how  essentially  like 
ourselves  these  others  really  are.  This  truth  I  will  illus- 
trate by  reference  to  the  exploit  of  a  former  pupil  and  friend 
of  mine,  who,  after  mastering  the  dialects  of  the  inhabitants 
of  sundry  South  Sea  Islands,  and  becoming  recognized  as  a 
friend  among  them,  translated  into  one  of  these  dialects  a 
book  from  the  Odyssey  and  read  it  to  their  assembled 
chiefs.  These  savages  found  the  hero  of  the  Homeric 
poem  a  man  after  their  own  heart,  and  greeted  his  suffer- 
ings with  pity  and  his  triumphs  and  his  escapes  with  sym- 
pathetic joy. 

It  is  also  instructive  to  notice  how  poetry  and  philosophy 
have  combined  to  call  attention  to  the  conception  that  all 
existences  recognize  the  principles  which  bind  together  as 
well  as  those  which  result  in  contention  and  strife.  Love, 
as  well  as  Hate,  or  Friendship  and  Yearning  for  one  another, 
as  well  as  Strife  and  Contention  {(^CKottj^  or  aropyy,  and 
vetKo<;  or  Koroi),  seemed  to  Empedocles  a  necessary  prin- 
ciple of  all  natural  objects.     And  in  a  sentence  quoted  by 


VIRTUES  OF  FEELING  829 

Aristotle,^  Euripides  sees  in  natural  phenomena  the  apt 
illustration  of  the  principle  of  friendships  among  men :  — 

"  The  parched  earth  loves  the  rain, 
And  the  high  heaven,  with  moisture  laden,  loves 
Earthwards  to  fall." 

From  a  yet  higher  ethical  point  of  view  did  Menander  sing: 
"  This  is  living,  not  to  live  for  thyself  alone  "  (ToOr'  earl  to 
^rjv  fjLTj  a-eavTO)  ^rjv  jxovcp).  If  modern  chemistry  finds  itself 
obliged  to  recognize  the  attractions  as  well  as  the  repulsions 
(which  are,  after  all,  only  superior  attractions)  of  the  atoms, 
doubtless  modern  biology  will  come  to  see  that  even  the 
"struggle  for  existence,"  which  it  has  hitherto  made  so  ex- 
clusive, is  actually  modified  among  the  lower  animals  by  the 
mysterious  far-reaching  power  of  sympathetic  feelings  and 
affections.  In  the  human  race,  these  latter  have  always  been 
so  influential  that  we  can  never  consider  the  evolution  of 
man  as  falling  in  any  unqualified  way  under  the  current  bio- 
logical rubric;  while,  with  every  extension  of  the  knowledge 
of  what  is  of  common  nature  and  common  value  to  all  men, 
the  natural  feelings  of  friendliness  and  sympathy  have 
tended  to  expand  themselves  so  as  to  cover  yet  wider  spheres 
of  human  nature.  In  the  present  intercourse  of  the  so-called 
"  superior  races  "  with  those  whom  they  choose  to  consider 
"inferior,"  there  is  testimony,  though  of  a  mixed  pathetic 
and  ludicrous  character,  that  the  former  are  beginning  to 
raise  again  the  debate  whether  the  latter  are  indeed  "  human  " 
in  the  fullest  sense  of  the  word.  Those  whom  greed  and  re- 
venge prompt  the  enlightened  {sic)  of  the  race  to  treat  as 
though  they  were  not  men,  the  enlightened  will  try  to  make 
out  realli/  are  not  men.  It  would  not  be  civilized  —  not  to 
say.  Christian  —  to  harry  and  hunt  men  like  squirrels  and 
rabbits,  or  tigers  and  wolves ! 

It  is  religion,  however,   which  has  been  the  mightiest 

1  Nic.  Eth.,  VIII,  i,  6. 


330  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

power  over  the  minds  of  men  to  foster  the  growth  of  the 
virtue  of  benevolence.  It  is  true,  but  only  in  the  sense  in 
which  we  have  explained  it,  that  "philanthropy  is  utterly 
foreign  to  the  savage  mind."  And  when  the  author  just 
quoted  asserts,^  "Humanity  in  this  highest  sense  was  brought 
into  the  world  by  Christianity, "  we  must  carefully  guard  our 
accord  with  this  assertion  so  as  to  make  the  assertion  itself 
accord  with  the  facts  of  history.  "  Humanity  in  this  highest 
sense"  is  "the  sacrifice  of  self  for  others,  without  regard  to 
difference  of  class  or  race."  It  was  undoubtedly  the  early 
Christian  religion  which  raised  this  virtue  of  benevolence  to 
the  height  of  a  supreme  moral  principle  and  made  it  effective 
in  the  morally  decadent  condition  of  the  ancient  Roman 
Empire.  We  find  the  same  moral  principle,  however,  rec- 
ognized and  proclaimed  by  both  of  the  two  most  widely 
influential  religions  of  the  Orient;  —  recognized  and  pro- 
claimed, indeed,  but  not  alive  and  effective  in  any  such 
manner  as  to  compete  successfully  with  its  working  among 
modern  Occidental  and  Christian  peoples.  Buddhism  in  its 
earlier  days  was  a  most  powerful  humanizing  influence.  It 
proclaimed  a  doctrine  of  friendly  feeling  and  helpful  con- 
duct, of  pity  for,  and  sympathy  with,  all  the  suffering  and 
needy,  quite  irrespective  of  differences  of  class  or  race. 
And  in  those  earlier  days  it  did  a  vast  work  for  the  Oriental 
World  in  spreading  a  genuine  and  helpful,  if  not  wholly 
enlightened  and  judicious,  spirit  of  active  well-wishing  for 
all  men. 

It  is  true  that  the  religion  from  which  Buddhism  was  a 
revolt  contains,  in  a  germinal  way,  some  recognition  of  the 
virtue  of  benevolence,  as  self-denial  and  well-wishing  toward 
all  sorts  and  conditions  of  men.  In  a  measure,  too,  it  con- 
nects this  human  virtue  with  "the  power  to  realize  the 
loving  presence  of  an  individualized  Personal  God  (?)  in 
everything  in  the  creation. "    Even  in  the  extreme  case  when 

1  Wundt,  Ethics,  I,  p.  291. 


VIETUES  OF  FEELING  331 

the  individual,  whose  character  must  determine  our  active 
relations  to  him  in  carrying  out  our  well-wishing,  is  suffer- 
ing the  inevitable  consequences  of  his  own  wrong-doing,  the 
feelings  of  universal  fellowship  should  not  wholly  be  extin- 
guished. "  When  one  person  suffers  the  consequences  of  his 
acts,"  asks  an  expounder  of  the  Bhagavad  Gita,^  "should  his 
fellow-brothers  stand  by  and  enjoy  the  spectacle  ?  Certainly 
not.  They  should,  led  by  feelings  of  universal  fellowship, 
do  their  duty  disinterestedly  towards  the  person  suffering." 
In  spite,  however,  of  those  nuggets  of  gold  that  are  hidden 
in  the  various  strata  of  the  writings  which  the  Hindu 
religion  has  produced,  the  practically  unbroken  reign  of 
caste,  with  all  its  ideas  and  practices  so  contradictory  of  the 
virtue  of  benevolence  and  of  the  beneficent  practices  belong- 
ing to  this  virtue,  will  remain  for  a  long  time  the  answer  to 
any  claims  which  its  devotees  may  advance  in  rivalry  of  the 
claims  of  Christianity. 

An  active  well-wishing  toward  all  men,  with  a  consistent 
self-sacrifice  in  their  behalf,  "without  regard  to  difference  of 
class  or  race,"  is  made  by  the  Christian  religion  a  cardinal 
and  quite  indispensable  duty  —  a  virtue  that  is  the  gift  of 
divine  grace,  and  not  to  have  which  is  contradictory  of  the 
essential  spirit  of  the  religion  itself.  In  a  treatise  on  the 
philosophy  of  conduct  there  is  little  or  no  need,  therefore, 
to  argue  the  point.  But  in  any  treatise  on  distinctively 
Christian  ethics  there  is  little  else  to  be  done  than  just  this, 
—  namely,  to  show  how  the  Christian  conception  of  man 
as  a  child  of  God,  and  of  God  as  the  loving  Father  and  yet 
just  Judge  of  all  men,  makes  rational  as  an  ethical  tenet, 
and  peremptory  as  a  moral  command,  the  virtue  of  benevo- 
lence toward  all  mankind.  Thus  religion  unites  all  men,  as 
brethren,  in  a  common  service  and  a  common  destiny.  In 
judging  Christianity  in   this  regard,   there   is   no  need  of 

1  Mr.  Kishori  Lai  Sarkar,  in  The  Hindu  System  of  Moral  Science,  cona- 
menting  upon  chap,  xi,  26  and  27. 


832  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

doubt.  In  judging  Christian  nations,  one  must  encounter 
the  spectacle  of  many  departures  from  the  Ideal  of  the  Vir- 
tuous Life,  which  are  all  the  more  conspicuous,  sad,  and 
blameworthy,  because  of  the  nature  of  this  ideal  itself. 

It  is  customary  to  claim  for  modern  commerce  a  large 
share  of  influence  in  spreading  the  spirit  of  humanitarian- 
ism  among  the  nations.  But  this  influence,  where  it  is 
favorable  to  the  extension  of  friendly  feelings  and  sympathy 
among  men,  is  mostly  indirect ;  its  more  direct  and  powerful 
effects  are  mostly  unfavorable.  Commerce  with  one  another 
on  the  part  of  foreign  peoples  makes  them  acquainted ;  and 
no  one  can  love  the  man  as  his  fellow  whom  he  does  not 
know  as  his  fellow  man.  Thus  the  virtue  of  benevolence  is 
made  able  to  take  a  wider  range.  But  the  narrower  spirit 
of  commercialism  is,  in  the  main,  distinctly  opposed  to  the 
spread  of  the  spirit  of  well-wishing.  If  it  were  only  the 
fairest  of  "fair  trade"  which  modern  commerce  sought  to 
secure,  the  result  of  its  efforts  would  probably  continue  only 
negative  or  indirect  at  best.  It  is  not  in  the  interests  of 
universal  well-wishing  that  men  engage  in  trade  with  one 
another.  And  when  so  much  of  the  trade  is  distinctly  not 
"fair  trade,"  as  is  still  everywhere  the  case,  it  is  indeed 
questionable  whether  the  indirect  benefits,  by  way  of  fostering 
benevolence,  compensate  for  the  direct  mischiefs  to  benevo- 
lent manifestations  which  commerce  constantly  works.  The 
past  and  the  present  state  of  the  commercial  relations  be- 
tween the  Christian  nations  and  China  is  a  fruitful  and  a 
frightful  commentary  on  the  charge  of  moral  ineffectiveness 
and  mischief-making  which  I  am  bringing  against  commerce. 
At  any  rate,  one  cannot  praise  commerce,  as  one  can  praise 
art,  philosophy,  and  religion,  for  its  services  in  extending 
the  natural  virtues  of  pity,  sympathy,  and  all  manner  of 
friendly  feeling  over  into  that  principled  love  of  all  man- 
kind for  which  the  word  "  benevolence "  is  now  made  to 
stand. 


VIRTUES  OF   FEELING  333 

What  has  already  been  seen  to  be  true  of  the  other  car- 
dinal virtues  now  appears  emphatically  true  of  the  virtue  of 
benevolence.  What,  indeed,  can  society  require  of  the  indi- 
vidual more  than  that  he  should  wish  well  to  all  his  fellows ; 
and,  of  course,  carry  the  well-wishing  out  into  conduct, 
wherever  and  whenever  the  opportunity  offers?  In  opposi- 
tion to  that  selfishness  which  certain  ethical  theories  make 
the  essential  root  of  all  wrong-doing,  benevolence  appears  as 
the  most  attractive  and  pervasive  principle  of  all  that  doing 
of  the  right  which  the  most  refined  moral  consciousness 
approves  and  commands.  Who  is  entitled  to  be  called  per- 
fectly good,  if  it  be  not  the  man  whose  supreme  motive  is 
wishing  the  welfare  of  all  ?  It  is  doubtless  possible  so  to 
expand  the  conception  of  this  virtue  as  to  make  it  seem  to 
embrace  all  the  other  virtues  so-called.  Of  this  effort  1 
cannot  wholly  approve,  as  will  be  made  clear  in  another 
connection.  But  the  very  grounds  on  which  the  effort  is 
based  point  toward  some  meeting-place  for  all  the  virtues 
when  each  of  them  is  raised  to  its  highest  potency. 

Both  the  counterfeits  of  this  class  of  virtues  and  the  vices 
which  are  the  opposites  of  the  virtues,  are  peculiarly  offensive 
to  "good  taste."  This  fact  is  significant  as  to  the  nature  of 
the  virtues  themselves.  They  flow  spontaneously  from  good 
feeling  for  others ;  they  are  calculated  to  awaken  correspond- 
ing good  feeling  in  others.  Their  extended  practice  makes 
kindliness  itself  to  be  widely  extended  among  men.  Kind- 
ness begets  kindness  in  others,  and  sympathy  begets  sym- 
pathy; the  case  is  not  the  same  with  courage,  wisdom,  and 
justice.  But  the  shamming  of  friendly  feeling  for  purposes 
of  gain  or  ambition  or  pride  is  distinctly  disagreeable. 
Fawning,  flattery,  and  fickle,  shallow  friendship,  are  assthet- 
ically  and  ethically  nauseating  to  the  refined  consciousness. 
Such  is  the  natural  and  normal  reaction  against  a  peculiarly 
affective  and  emotional  form  of  vice.  But  harshness,  cen- 
soriousness,  and  kindred  manifestations  of  a  lack  of  friendly 


334  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

feeling  are  also  vices  that  excite  answering  feelings  of  a  like 
disagreeable  character.  That  sickly  sentimentality  which  is 
sometimes  praised  as  "loving  everybody,"  irrespective,  not 
so  much  of  class  or  race  as  of  moral  character  and  good  or 
ill  desert,  instead  of  carrying  wisdom,  justice,  and  truth  up 
to  the  heights  where  they  are  lost  in  a  common  halo  with 
love,  too  often  degrades  and  perverts  these  three  cardinal 
virtues  in  its  foolish  effort  to  reduce  them  all  to  a  subordi- 
nate position  under  its  control.  Such  benevolence  is  no 
substitute  for  justice  even  of  the  sterner  and  more  punitive 
kind;  nor  for  courage  of  one's  convictions;  nor  for  the 
wisdom  that  fears  the  consequences  of  breaking  natural  or 
Divine  law  more  than  of  disturbing,  however  deeply  and 
long,  the  smoothly  running  current  of  social  good  feeling. 

Of  all  the  vices  which  militate  against  good  feeling  none 
is  baser  than  ingratitude ;  and  perhaps  none  is  more  common. 
Indeed,  this  vice  seems  to  combine  unkindness  and  injustice 
in  a  peculiarly  heinous  fashion  of  mixture.  For  there  is  no 
other  good  which  every  individual  man  has  so  perfectly  at 
his  disposal  for  a  just  and  equitable  distribution  as  his  own 
"good  will,"  the  sincere  well-wishing,  the  friendly  feeling 
for  his  fellow-men.  There  is  no  other  good  which,  when 
convinced  of  its  sincerity,  men  prize  more  highly,  if  once 
they  rise  to  the  moral  point  of  view.  Now  while  the  nature 
of  benevolence  is  such  that  it  does  not  seek  a  return  in  its 
own  kind,  or  refrain  from  the  beneficent  deed  through  fear 
that  it  will  not  meet  a  reward,  it  is  still  true  that  friendly 
feeling,  if  genuine,  and  however  manifested,  merits  friendly 
feeling  on  the  part  of  its  recipient.  Such  reciprocity  is  one 
of  the  most  essential  characteristics  of  the  distinctively 
social  virtues.  So  that  ingratitude  adds  injustice  to  un- 
kindness, and  both  of  the  most  inexcusable  kind.  No  doubt 
the  temptation  to  ingratitude  comes  chiefly  from  the  dislike 
of  being  obligated  to  another,  and  of  the  feeling  of  inferi- 
ority which  such    obligation   implies.     But  such  a  motive 


VIRTUES  OF  FEELING  335 

to  ingratitude  adds  to  its  already  great  load  of  meanness. 
One  of  the  most  false  touches  in  all  the  writings  of  Aristotle 
is  the  passage  in  the  Nicomachean  Ethics,  ^  where  he  says  of 
the  high-minded  man :  "  It  is  his  nature  to  confer  benefits, 
but  he  is  ashamed  to  receive  them;  for  the  former  is  the 
part  of  a  superior,  the  latter  of  an  inferior.  And  when  he 
has  received  a  benefit,  he  is  apt  to  confer  a  greater  in  return ; 
for  thus  his  creditor  will  become  his  debtor  and  be  in  the 
position  of  a  recipient  of  his  favour. "  ^  This  spirit  is,  how- 
ever, quite  the  opposite  of  high-mindedness  or  even  of  ordi- 
nary friendliness  on  the  part  of  the  superior;  carried  into 
effect  it  discourages,  if  it  does  not  make  utterly  impossible 
that  fine  mixture  of  justice  and  benevolence  in  which  the 
virtue  of  gratitude  consists.  Of  all  the  virtues  gratitude  is 
the  fittest  and  the  easiest  for  the  inferior  to  exercise  toward 
his  superior  and  benefactor;  and  when  thus  exercised,  it 
partakes  also  of  the  virtue  of  fidelity  and  so  makes  possible 
for  the  poor  and  dependent  a  highmindedness  of  their  own. 
All  such  relations  presuppose,  of  course,  that  the  good  deed, 
the  favor  done  or  the  help  rendered,  is  a  manifestation  of 
genuine  and  unfeigned  kindly  friendship  —  a  sound  fruit 
from  the  beautiful  root  of  humanitarian  feeling. 

In  conclusion,  attention  should  be  called  to  the  pleasure- 
giving  quality  of  many  of  the  subordinate  forms  of  these 
virtues  of  feeling;  this  renders  them  more  influential  for 
good,  or  more  seductive  for  misjudgment  and  even  mis- 
chievous consequences,  than  any  of  the  colder  and  harder 
virtues.  Much  is  readily  forgiven  to  the  kindly,  sympathetic 
disposition,  to  the  "  good-hearted "  man  or  woman.  For, 
however  the  judgment  may  condemn  a  somewhat  habitual 
lack  of  wisdom  or  an  occasional  breach  of  justice,  the  heart 
responds  to  his  heart  in  kindly  and  sympathetic  fashion.  It 
is  on  the  whole  well  that  this  is  so.     For  cowardice,  greed, 

1  IV,  3,  24. 

2  IV,  iii,  24  (Translation  of  F.  H.  Peters,  p.  117). 


336  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

ambition,  and  lust  are  still  among  men  so  excessively  influ- 
ential for  suffering  and  want,  and  so  productive  of  hardness 
of  heart  and  misery  of  life,  that  the  sunshine  and  cheer 
which  kindly  feeling  brings  can  scarcely  be  overestimated. 
Yet  your  man  who  is  thoughtless,  fickle,  and  not  altogether 
careful  of  truth  and  of  the  rights  of  others,  can  be  the  cause 
of  much  misery,  —  sometimes  of  even  more  than  the  more 
selfish  and  deliberately  cruel  man.  And  it  is  not  to  be 
forgotten  that,  neither  in  human  physiology  nor  in  human 
conduct,  is  it  always  the  most  obviously  comely  and  graceful 
manifestation  of  life  which  is  the  most  essential  and  effective 
of  good  results. 


CHAPTER  XIV 

THE  UNITY  OF  VIRTUE 

There  is  little  doubt  that  the  foregoing  description  of  the 
Virtuous  Life  would,  in  its  main  features  at  least,  seem  fairly 
satisfactory  when  brought  for  judgment  before  the  bar  of 
current  popular  opinion.  It  would  accord  substantially  with 
this  opinion,  and  it  would  seem  to  carry  its  own  explanation, 
proof,  and  sanction,  with  itself.  There  is  considerable  his- 
torical ground  also  for  the  conclusion  that  if  an  essentially 
like  description  could  be  adapted  to  those  differences  in 
language,  customs,  and  physical  and  social  environment, 
which  characterize  the  different  stages  and  types  of  man's 
ethical  evolution,  it  would  gain  a  general  acceptance  in  all 
times  and  in  all  places.  Who  is  the  good  man,  —  the  man 
who  conducts  himself  as  a  man  ought,  and  so  meets  with  the 
approbation  of  the  universal  moral  consciousness  ?  He  is  the 
man  who  is  brave  and  constant,  wise  and  just,  hospitable, 
generous,  and  kind.  To  explain  further  than  this  or  even  to 
seek  for  the  proofs  and  sanctions  of  so  much  as  this,  seems 
to  the  multitude  of  men  to  belong  to  interests  of  a  purely 
academical  sort.  Plain  common-sense  is  satisfied  to  take  its 
ethical  judgments  and  opinions  on  a  basis  of  life  and  reality. 

The  scientific  student  of  conduct,  however  —  its  origins, 
development,  sanctions,  and  ultimate  principles  —  cannot  be 
satisfied  with  a  merely  descriptive  history  of  the  virtues,  no 
matter  how  true  this  history  is  to  the  facts  of  individual  or 
ethnic  psychology.  As  said  Socrates  to  Meno :  "  When  I  ask 
you  for  one  virtue,  you  present  me  with  a  swarm  of  them." 

22 


338  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

Science  seeks  for  some  principle  of  unity ;  and  the  argument 
which  gives  a  warrant  and  a  guide  to  this  scientific  impulse 
may  be  stated  in  somewhat  the  following  way.  Here  are 
nine  —  more  or  less  —  so-called  cardinal  virtues;  and  yet 
each  one  of  the  nine  is  confessedly  of  an  order  which  needs 
to  be  qualified  by  one  or  more  of  the  others.  For  courage 
that  is  not  wise,  even  if  still  entitled  to  be  called  the  virtue 
of  courage,  is  certainly  not  virtuous  when  considered  as  folly ; 
and  kindness  that  plainly  violates  the  principles  of  justice, 
however  well  intentioned,  is  not  to  be  commended  from 
the  higher  ethical  point  of  view.  Moreover,  we  have  dis- 
covered that  whenever  any  of  the  more  fundamental  of  the 
virtues  is  considered  in  its  highest  purity  of  excellence,  and 
in  its  widest  range  of  application,  it  begins  to  show  a  kind 
of  capacity  to  embrace,  as  it  were,  a  large  number  of  other 
relatively  subordinate  virtues.  If,  then,  all  these  forms  of 
conduct  are  virtues,  there  must  be  some  characteristic  which 
they  all  share  in  common,  so  as  to  entitle  them  all  to  the 
same  name.  What  is  this  characteristic  in  which  all  the 
types  or  kinds  of  virtuous  conduct  share  ?  What  is  that 
essential  quality  which  gives  their  virtuousness  to  the  virtues  ? 

The  endeavor  to  discover  a  unifying  trait,  or  principle,  for 
the  virtues  is  undoubtedly  born  of  the  scientific  spirit ;  and 
whatever  its  practical  value  may  be,  or  even  its  success 
in  the  research  which  it  stimulates,  it  cannot  be  disregarded 
by  the  philosophy  of  conduct.  Two  considerations,  however, 
should  always  anticipate  and  constantly  accompany  such 
research.  And,  first,  it  must  be  remembered  that  in  the 
order  of  experience  and  reality  the  manifold  and  various 
precedes;  it  is  the  actually  experienced,  the  real;  and  the 
so-called  unity  is  only  abstract  and  conceptual.  Virtues 
exist;  they  are  the  actual,  concrete  forms  of  the  Virtuous 
Life.  Virtue  does  not  exist,  except  as  a  conception  abstracted 
from  the  existent  specimens  of  the  virtues. 

Second :  in  certain  similar  cases  we  find  our  keenest  psy- 


THE  UNITY  OF  VIETUE  889 

chological  analysis  much  puzzled,  if  not  completely  baffled, 
in  its  endeavors  to  discover  the  essential,  unifying  marks  of 
similar  conscious  states.  Men  speak,  for  example,  of  differ- 
ent pleasures  and  pains;  and  then,  again,  of  pleasure  and 
pain,  in  the  abstract  and  yet  as  though  the  intention  were  to 
appeal  to  a  universal  experience.  But  pleasures  and  pains 
are  of  an  indefinite  variety ;  and  neither  pleasure  nor  pain  is 
ever  experienced,  or  can  possibly  be  experienced,  except  as 
some  concrete,  definite  kind  of  a  pleasure  or  a  pain.  But 
what  is  common,  for  example,  to  the  anguish  of  having  a 
firmly  rooted  tooth  drawn,  or  an  attack  of  neuralgia  of  the 
stomach,  and  the  melancholy  memory  of  a  neglected  oppor- 
tunity, or  the  grief  of  having  offended  one's  invisible  Divine 
Friend  ?  Both  experiences  are  painful,  to  be  sure ;  but  what 
construction  shall  be  given  to  the  conception  of  what  is 
common  to  both  —  quoad  pain  ?  How,  on  the  other  hand, 
shall  science  depict  the  common  essence  of  two  pleasures 
—  one  of  which  is  the  gratification  of  some  appetite,  for 
example,  and  the  other  the  memory  of  some  deed  of  gratitude 
in  return  for  help  rendered  to  another,  or  the  appreciation  of 
the  present  Divine  favor?  In  answer  to  such  questions  as 
these  the  current  psychology  is  accustomed  to  give  either 
evasive  or  inadequate  answers.  Evasive  —  distinctly  so — 
are  all  such  theories  as  those  which,  since  the  day  when  the 
close  of  the  Seventh  Book  of  the  Nicomachean  Ethics  was 
written  down  to  the  present  hour,  have  defined  pleasure  and 
pain  by  reciting  their  physiological  or  psychical  antecedents  or 
accompaniments.  Such  theories,  at  best,  only  describe,  in  a 
lame  way  some  of  the  known  or  conjectural  conditions  under 
which  pleasures  and  pains  of  certain  sorts  are  experienced,  and 
then  confuse  the  conditions  with  the  experience  of  pleasure  or 
pain  itself.^     More  misleading  still,  and  decidedly  mischievous 

1  For  a  more  detailed  discussion  of  this  subject  compare  chapters  ix,  "Feel- 
ing :  its  Nature  and  Classes  "  and  x,  "  Feeling,  as  Pleasure-Pain,"  iu  the  au- 
thor's Psychology,  Descriptive  and  Explanatory. 


340  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

in  the  field  of  ethics,  is  the  psychology  which  identifies  the 
entire  feeling  side  of  human  nature  with  the  pleasure-pains, 
then  proceeds  to  strip  the  remainder  of  its  contingent  judg- 
ments and  estimates  of  value,  and  then  propounds  a  theory 
of  a  wholly  abstract  and  unreal  gross  quantum  of  pleasure 
and  antithetic  pain  which  it  can  distribute  by  weight,  as  it 
were,  among  the  different  concrete  experiences  of  human 
lives.  This  is  scientific  unification  and  simplification  with 
a  vengeance ;  but  its  simplicity  is  a  delusion,  and  its  unify- 
ing a  snare.  And  the  picture  of  the  individual  or  social 
Self  which  it  thus  completes,  as  seeking  with  a  pair  of  phan- 
tom scales  in  its  hand  to  weigh  out  larger  portions  or 
smaller  driblets  of  the  current  pleasure-pain  commodity,  no 
more  resembles  the  infinitely  rich  and  varied  affective  expe- 
riences and  judgments  in  estimating  the  goods  of  life  which 
belong  to  the  real,  living  man,  than  the  rude  sketch  of  his 
bodily  appearance,  as  drawn  by  the  child  or  the  savage, 
resembles  the  histological  structure  and  physiological  action 
of  man's  actual  bodily  organism. 

Another  example  of  the  same  difficulty  might  be  taken 
from  the  condition  in  which  psychological  analysis  finds 
itself  compelled  to  leave  the  search  for  the  unifying  essence 
of  man's  sensuous  experiences.  Light  and  color,  noise  and 
musical  tones,  the  various  smells  and  tastes,  and  the  sev- 
eral modifications  of  consciousness  caused  by  stimulating 
the  areas  of  the  skin,  are  all  classifiable  together  as  "  sensa- 
tions " ;  and  the  psychologist  knows  beyond  doubt  what  are 
some  of  the  conditions  and  concomitants,  as  well  as  some 
of  the  characteristics  common  to  them  all.  It  is  another  and 
much  more  difficult  problem,  however,  to  frame  a  conception 
of  sensation,  as  such,  which  shall  include  only  the  common 
characteristics  and  neglect  all  that  belongs  exclusively  either 
to  sensations  of  smell,  or  of  taste,  or  of  sight,  or  of  sound. 

It  will  not  be  an  unexampled  failure,  then,  if  the  student 
of  ethics  fails  to  discover  in  what  consists  the  virtuousness 


THE   UNITY  OF  VIRTUE  Ml 

of  the  different  virtues.  For  virtues  —  I  repeat  —  as  actu- 
ally recognized  and  concretely  practised  by  men,  are  the 
antecedents  in  the  order  both  of  experience  and  of  reason ; 
but  to  discover  the  ''  essence  of  virtue "  involves  an  aca- 
demic quest  which  may  not  be  destined  to  end  in  complete 
success. 

There  are  two  forms,  closely  allied  but  by  no  means  iden- 
tical, which  have  been  taken  by  the  customary  attempts  at 
unifying  the  particular  virtues.  Both  of  these  are,  in  my 
judgment,  unsatisfactory  in  their  method  as  well  as  in  their 
result.  One  of  them  consists  in  selecting  some  single  feature 
or  aspect  of  conduct,  and  then  identifying  the  virtuous  or 
vicious  quality  of  all  conduct  with  the  goodness  or  badness 
of  this  one  feature  or  aspect.  The  other  consists  in  selecting 
some  one  of  the  more  important  of  the  virtues,  and  then  iden- 
tifying with  it  the  entire  essential  content  of  the  virtuous  life. 
Thus  if  one  follows  the  trail  of  the  first  argument  in  one's 
search  after  the  unity  of  virtue,  one  will  discover  the  virtuous- 
ness  of  virtue  to  consist  in  either  good  external  behavior,  or 
good  motive,  or  good  intention.  But  if  the  second  method  of 
solving  the  problem  be  adopted,  then  it  will  be  claimed  that 
all  the  virtues  are,  in  the  last  analysis  and  essentially  consid- 
ered, either  wisdom,  or  justice,  or  benevolence,  or  some  other 
one  among  them  all.  The  first  method  of  unifying  the  partic- 
ular virtues  results  in  a  narrow  and  perverted  conception  of 
conduct,  as  conduct  has  already  been  described  in  accordance 
with  the  opinions  and  practices  of  mankind.  The  second 
method  results  in  so  modifying  and  expanding  the  conception 
of  some  one  of  the  particular  virtues  as  that  it  loses  all  its 
concrete  and  valuable  particularity  in  a  vague  and  shadowy 
generalization  as  to  the  nature  of  virtue.  The  result  in  both 
cases  is  similar  to  that  obtained  by  a  similar  method  of  treat- 
ing the  allied  phenomena  of  man's  religious  life.  Thus  in 
answer  to  the  question,  What  is  religion  ?  one  may  locate 
its  "  essence  "  in  feeling,  or  dogma,  or  behavior ;  or  one  may 


342  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

attempt  the  answer  by  so  manipulating  some  one  religion  as 
to  include  under  it  all  "  true  "  religions  and  exclude  all  other 
religions  on  the  ground  of  their  being  "  false." 

The  one  essential  characteristic  of  virtue  is  not  the  char- 
acter of  the  external  behavior ;  the  science  of  ethics  cannot 
bring  about  a  unification  of  the  virtues  under  the  conception 
of  Conformity  to  the  customs  and  laws  regulating  such  beha- 
vior. It  has  already  been  shown  that  without  regard  for  those 
customs,  laws,  and  precepts,  which  give  external  expression 
to  the  developing  moral  consciousness  of  mankind,  there 
could  be  no  concrete  standards  for  the  social  testing  of  con- 
duct and  of  character,  —  no  society  even  as  an  affair  of  ethical 
influences  and  ethical  significance.  But,  on  the  other  hand, 
nowhere  and  never  do  we  find  the  merely  external  conformity 
to  custom,  or  law,  or  moral  precept  regulating  behavior, 
identifiable  throughout  with  the  essence  of  virtue.  For  "  vir- 
tuous "  or  "  vicious  "  is  an  epithet  which  men  apply  to  conduct ; 
and  conduct  is  something  more  than  mere  conformity  to  any 
rule,  however  set,  of  behavior.  It  is  an  activity  of  the  con- 
scious Self,  and  not  an  affair  of  muscles,  bones,  and  tendons 
chiefly.  Men  call  the  bow  strong  and  good  which,  when 
drawn  by  a  strong  arm  and  directed  by  trained  visual  and 
muscular  sense,  speeds  its  arrow  truly  and  well  toward  the 
far-distant  mark.  Men  do  not,  except  in  a  figurative  way, 
demand  of  the  bow  the  feeling  of  fidelity,  the  resolve  to  try  to 
hit  the  mark,  the  judgment  of  the  distance  at  which  the  mark 
is  set,  of  the  resistance  from  the  currents  of  wind,  or  of  the 
downpull  of  gravity.  In  the  case  of  the  lower  animals,  unless 
we  endow  them  with  ^wasi-moral  qualities,  we  are  satisfied  if 
their  behavior  is  satisfactory,  whatever  the  motives  and  inten- 
tions which  initiate  it,  or  the  judgments  which  guide  it,  may 
chance  to  be.  We  prize  affection,  fidelity,  sound  judgment, 
courage,  etc.,  on  their  part ;  but  we  do  not  demand  these 
states  of  consciousness  as  in  themselves  commendable  so  long 
as  we  consider  the  animals  to  be  merely  conscious  machines. 


THE  UNITY  OF  VIKTUE  343 

In  man's  case,  however,  the  very  locus  in  which  resides  the 
virtuous  quality  of  the  virtue  is  the  conscious  feeling,  judging, 
and  willing  Self.  It  is  this  conscious  Self  which  is  good  or 
bad,  virtuous  or  vicious,  deserving  of  approval  or  of  disappro- 
bation, and  of  punishment  or  reward.  Whenever  men  have 
reason  to  believe  that  it  is  cowardly,  they  do  not  call  the 
action  brave,  however  it  may  conform  externally  to  the  requi- 
sites of  the  virtue  of  courage ;  or  wise,  if  the  motive  and 
intention  be  those  of  a  fool,  in  spite  of  all  the  more  obvious 
semblances  of  wisdom.  We  cannot,  then,  adopt  any  view 
which,  like  that  of  Locke,^  regards  the  whole  essential  quality 
of  morality  to  be  the  conformity  of  action  to  a  rule. 

It  is  a  much  more  frequent  temptation  and  consequent 
error  to  merge  the  whole  of  conduct  in  the  so-called  Motive 
merely.  Or  if  the  motives  be  taken  collectively  and  regarded 
as  fairly  stable  in  character  and  habitual  in  their  impulsive 
effect,  his  "  disposition  "  may  be  counted  upon  as  summariz- 
ing the  virtuous  or  vicious  character  of  the  individual.  The 
good  man  is,  then,  as  the  popular  phrase  expresses  the  thought, 
the  "  good-hearted  "  man  ;  he  is  the  man  who  always  means 
well.  One  will  therefore  have  to  say  that  conduct  is  virtuous 
whenever  the  motive  which  issues  in  the  conduct  is  virtuous. 
And  it  would  seem  to  follow  that  the  one  thing  which  he  who 
would  lead  the  Virtuous  Life  must  do  is  to  make  sure  that 
his  motives  are  good.  For  are  we  not  assured  by  those  who 
invoke  the  sanctions  of  religion  in  behalf  of  morality,  that 
God  has  regard  to  the  motives  only  ? 

Now  although  I  cannot  for  a  moment  admit  the  adequacy 
of  this  attempt  to  simplify  the  conception  of  virtue,  I  have 
no  desire  to  hold  it  to  the  strictest  account  for  the  language 
which  it  sometimes  employs.  The  word  "  motive  "  does  not 
once  occur  in  that  collection  of  books  (the  Bible)  to  which 
this  view  of  the  essential  nature  of  all  the  virtues  most 
frequently  appeals.     The  word  "  heart,"  however,  does  occur 

1  Essay  Concerning  Human  Understanding,  book  II,  chap,  xxviii. 


344  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

there  hundreds  of  tinies ;  and  although  the  heart  includes,  in 
that  vague  and  unscientific  way  which  distinguishes  the  psy- 
chology of  the  biblical  writers,  activities  of  intellect  and  of 
will,  it  undoubtedly  emphasizes  more  particularly  the  side  of 
feeling  and  of  the  emotions.  Since  the  mishaps  which  arise 
in  conduct,  as  well  as  the  more  heinous  sins  and  crimes  of 
humanity,  have  their  origin  so  largely  in  selfish  and  dis- 
ordered appetites,  impulses,  and  desires  (the  motive  elements 
of  human  nature)  ;  and  since  the  inducements  and  disciplines 
to  improved  conduct  which  ethical  praxis  aims  to  employ 
must  reach  man  so  largely  through  his  feelings;  there  is 
good  reason  for  emphasizing  the  supreme  importance  of 
purity  of  motive  in  all  attempts  at  virtuous  living.  All 
this,  however,  does  not  alter  the  essential  facts  of  the  case ; 
good  judgment  is  as  necessary  to  virtuous  conduct  as  is  good 
disposition ;  and  the  same  is  true  of  the  courageous,  stren- 
uous, and  constant  will. 

Nor  are  matters  helped  in  the  interests  of  unification  when 
it  is  urged  that,  of  course,  the  motive  to  inform  one's  self  and 
to  form  good  and  wise  judgment  is  a  part  of  the  general  good 
motive  required  by  the  demands  of  virtue ;  and  as  well  that 
one  must  cherish  the  motive  to  be,  and  to  grow,  more  courage- 
ous and  constant  in  self-control,  to  get  the  mastery  over  one's 
Self,  so  to  say.  To  all  this  the  reply  is  obvious  :  the  disposi- 
tion to  cultivate  wisdom  is  doubtless  a  species  of  wisdom,  and 
so  is  the  disposition  to  cultivate  courage  or  that  species  of 
self-control  which  results  in  temperance.  But  if  the  actual 
acquirement  of  the  wisdom,  the  courage,  the  temperance,  or 
the  kindness,  does  not  somehow  result  from  the  motive,  then 
the  quantum  of  virtue  and  as  well  the  particular  qualities  of 
virtuous  conduct  are  so  far  forth  lacking.  The  ideal  of  virtue 
can  no  more  excuse  this  lack  than  the  common  moral 
consciousness  of  mankind  actually  does  excuse  it.  And 
experience  shows  that  good  disposition,  and  commendable 
motives,  when  they  fail  of  the  moral  strength  and   the  wise 


THE  UNITY  OF  VIRTUE  346 

judgment  necessary  to  realize  themselves  in  courageous  and 
wise  conduct,  may  be  excused  in  part  and  for  a  time,  but 
they  are  finally,  and  rightly,  visited  with  increased  moral  dis- 
approval and  even  contempt.  For  although  it  is  necessary 
for  the  heart  to  go  into  the  deed  in  order  to  impart  to  the 
deed  its  quality  of  life  and  moral  vivacity,  the  heart  that 
yields  only  motives  which  are  not  guided  by  good  judg- 
ment and  set  into  reality  by  strenuous  will,  is  so  far  from 
being  the  summary  of  all  virtuous  living  as  to  incur  for 
its  owner  the  greatest  risk  of  being  quite  seduced  away 
from  the  paths  which  lead  toward  the  attainment  of  the 
Moral   Ideal. 

The  science  of  psychology,  then,  sets  certain  limits  to  the 
ethical  theory  of  virtue  when  this  theory  attempts  to  confine 
the  essential  nature  of  virtue  to  the  character  of  the  motive. 
For,  in  psychological  language  motive  is  any  impulse,  desire, 
or  wish,  which  tends  to  induce  a  definite  form  of  volition. 
Motives  that  are  "good,"  in  the  ethical  meaning  of  this 
adjective,  are  such  impulses,  desires,  and  wishes,  as  tend 
to  induce  the  choice  of  good,  or  virtuous,  action.  And, 
if  all  morality  consist  in  the  motive  alone,  to  desire  or  wish 
to  be  perfectly  virtuous  is  equivalent  to  being  perfectly  vir- 
tuous. But  such  an  extreme  conclusion  is  quite  inconsistent 
with  the  moral  consciousness  of  men,  as  this  consciousness 
expresses  itself  in  the  feelings  of  obligation  and  ethical 
approbation,  in  the  complex  conception  of  conduct  and  of 
the  virtues,  and  in  the  most  satisfactory  attempts  at  the 
speculative  construction  of  the  conception  of  the  Right. 

If,  however,  to  this  conception  of  motive  as  mainly  emo- 
tional, we  add  the  elements  of  "  reason  "  as  an  inducement 
to  certain  forms  of  judgment,  we  confess  in  a  covert  way  the 
inadequacy  of  our  conception,  by  introducing  into  it  from 
the  outside,  as  it  were,  what  does  not  properly  belong  to  its 
psychological  character. 

^'^Y  motive  I  mean,"  says  Jonathan  Edwards,  "the  whole 


346  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

of  that  which  moves,  excites,  or  invites  the  mind  to  voli- 
tion whether  that  be  one  thing  singly,  or  many  things 
conjunctively."  It  is  now  only  necessary  to  couple  this  con- 
ception of  motive  with  the  Edwardean  theory  of  a  strictly 
determined  will  in  order  to  complete  a  machine-like  theory 
of  the  nature  of  virtue  and  of  the  virtuous  life.  But  it  can- 
not be  too  often  repeated  that  conduct  involves  —  nay !  it  is 
—  the  entire  Self,  feeling,  judgment,  and  will,  functioning 
together  in  relation  to  a  Moral  Ideal.  When,  and  only 
when,  this  total  functioning  corresponds  with  some  portion 
or  aspect  of  this  ideal  are  we  warranted  in  calling  the 
particular  piece  of  conduct  virtuous.  To  quote  from  the 
Nicomachean  Ethics : ^  "If  the  purpose  is  to  be  all  it  should 
be,  both  the  calculation  or  the  reasoning  must  be  true,  and 
the  desire  must  be  right." 

Similar  objections  may  be  urged  against  identifying  the 
virtuousness  of  the  virtues,  the  "  essence  "  of  all  virtue,  with 
the  so-called  Intention.  This  word  ordinarily  includes  ele- 
ments which  do  not  so  strictly  belong  to  the  motive;  and 
such  elements  are  partly  of  the  intellectual  and  partly  of  the 
voluntary  order.  The  man  of  habitually  good  intentions 
might  perhaps  be  distinguished  from  the  man  of  habitually 
good  motives  by  his  larger  measure  of  thoughtfulness  in 
planning  his  conduct,  and  by  the  increased  certainty  with 
which  the  plans  get  themselves  actualized  in  the  choices  and 
their  sequent  courses  of  action.  As  said  Locke,  in  his  naive, 
common-sense  way  of  stating  the  conceptions  of  the  popular 
psychology:  "Intention  is  when  the  mind,  with  great  earn- 
estness, and  of  choice,  fixes  its  view  on  any  idea,  considers 
it  on  every  side."  An  ethically  good  intention,  then,  may 
seem  to  include  an  earnest  desire  to  do  the  right  thing,  a 
voluntary  direction  of  the  judgment  upon  the  problem  of 
determining  what  that  right  thing  is,  and  the  suspension  of 
action  during  a  process  of  deliberation  which  enables  the 

1  See  VI,  ii,  2. 


V 

UN 

THE  UNITY  OF  VIKTUE 

mind  to  regard  all  the  elements  entering  into  the  problem. 
In  this  way,  of  course,  the  evaluation  of  the  end  of  con- 
duct becomes  more  completely  rational ;  the  estimate  of  the 
most  effective  and  appropriate  means  is  gained;  and  the 
increased  chances  are  secured  that  the  final  choice  will  be 
satisfactory  from  the  moral  point  of  view. 

Intention  apprehends  and  comprehends  the  probable  con- 
sequences of  conduct  far  more  than  does  mere  motive.  For 
this  reason  it  is  ordinarily  held  that  the  responsibility  is 
increased  and  the  blameworthiness  heightened  if  the  conduct 
is  wrong,  the  praiseworthiness  if  the  conduct  is  right, 
according  to  the  intention.  Moreover,  to  intend  evidently 
gives  more  of  distinctively  moral  quality  to  the  entire  pro- 
cess ;  for  it  involves  and  commits  to  the  process  more  of  the 
entire  Moral  Selfhood.  To  be  in  the  habit  of  framing  good 
intentions  (it  is  well  to  notice  at  this  point  that  one  speaks 
of  creating  or  forming  intentions  and  of  indulging  or  encour- 
aging motives)  is  undoubtedly  a  virtuous  habit;  it  is  a  most 
desirable  species  of  wisdom,  and  a  duty,  as  well,  to  which 
the  power  of  rational  intending  obligates  every  man.  It 
must  also  be  admitted  that  in  certain  cases  good  intention 
is  by  far  the  greater  part,  and  it  may  become  the  whole  of 
virtue.  Finally,  if  one  insists  on  so  extending  and  modify- 
ing the  word  intention  as  to  change  quite  completely  its  own 
primary  meaning,  one  may  make  a  brave  show  of  identifying 
it  with  the  virtuousness  of  all  the  virtues.  I  must,  how- 
ever, object  to  this,  and  for  the  following,  among  other 
reasons. 

First:  if  under  "good  intention"  it  is  meant  to  include 
the  best  possible  functioning  of  the  Moral  Self,  as  feeling, 
judging,  and  willing,  in  the  interests  of  the  moral  Ideal, 
good  intention  is  certainly  identical  with  the  morality  of  all 
the  virtues.  The  man  of  perfectly  good  intentions  would 
then  be  the  man  of  the  perfect  Virtuous  Life.  But  this 
would  only  change  titles  without  simplifying  the  subject. 


348  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

Morally  good  conduct  would  remain  just  as  complex  an  affair 
as  before;  the  virtues  would  not  be  unified;  and  for  the  very 
good  reason  that  we  should  not  be  at  all  enlightened  as  to 
the  nature  of  their  unity. 

Secondly:  The  forming  of  good  intentions  is  often  the 
best  possible  exercise  of  virtue;  sometimes  it  is  the  only 
way  of  virtue  possible  under  the  circumstances.  But  there 
are  certain  forms  of  feeling  to  which  the  moral  consciousness 
of  men  quite  generally  responds  with  approval  that  are  not 
so  consistent  with  the  fixedness  of  view  upon  an  idea,  and 
the  consideration  of  it  from  every  side.  These  feelings  seem 
to  lose  somewhat  of  their  moral  beauty,  or  effectiveness, 
when  they  lose  their  spontaneity ;  and  spontaneity  belongs  to 
them  rather  as  motives  than  when  they  become  transformed 
into  fixed  and  deliberate  intentions.  Still  further  must  it 
be  remembered  that  often,  if  not  ordinarily,  time  for  the 
consideration  of  consequences  and  for  the  contemplation 
of  the  ideal  of  virtue,  cannot  be  secured  previous  to  action ; 
to  attempt  to  secure  time  would  result  in  vacillation  and 
delay  and  even  in  loss  of  opportunity  for  any  fit  action  at 
all.  The  Puritanic  virtues  may  be  called  the  virtues  of 
good  intention.  But  there  are  other  virtues  of  good  impulse 
and  good  feeling  more  particularly.  Such  are  all  the  sub- 
ordinate forms  of  kindliness,  hospitality,  generosity,  etc. ; 
and  as  well  much  of  courage  and  temperance.  Nor  am  I  at 
all  sure  that  so-called  "  righteous  "  anger,  if  righteous  at  all, 
is  always  improved  by  being  converted  into  the  virtuous 
intention  to  punish  or  even  to  reform.  Its  outburst  and 
expression  is  not  infrequently  a  token  of  the  virtuous  heart 
of  the  angry  man ;  and  the  effect  of  such  anger  is  seldom,  if 
time  and  form  of  expression  be  appropriate,  otherwise  than 
morally  purifying.  On  the  contrary,  the  infliction  of  pun- 
ishment, and  the  attempt  at  reform,  without  more  or  less  of 
such  spontaneity  of  feeling,  seem  to  lack  something  of  right 
moral   quality.     And   men   resent,    rather  than   appreciate 


THE  UNITY  OF  VIRTUE  349 

highly,   all  intention  to  be  kind  or  generous  toward  them, 
which  is  not  largely  a  spontaneous  feeling. 

Thirdly :  there  are  some  of  the  most  cardinal  and  impor- 
tant virtues  of  each  of  the  three  main  classes  which  do  not 
seem  reducible  to  good  intentions  merely.  For  example, 
there  is  that  virtue,  mainly  of  the  will,  which  was  called 
constancy.  To  be  sure,  it  may  be  affirmed  that  in  order  to 
be  always  a  man  of  good  intentions  one  must  constantly  be 
framing  and  keeping  the  intentions  good.  But  this  bit  of 
sophistry  does  not  meet  my  objection.  For  it  is  just  that 
necessity  of  being  constant,  of  having  a  voluntary  fidelity  to 
the  chosen  ideal,  which  must  be  introduced  into  our  account- 
ing for  the  habit  of  intending  well,  in  order  to  complete  the 
picture  of  the  ideally  virtuous  life.  To  a  less  degree  some- 
what of  the  same  necessity  applies  to  the  virtue  of  courage. 
The  best  of  intentions  need  to  be  carried  out  with  courage 
in  order  to  perfect  the  system  of  virtuous  forms  of  conduct. 
Shall  we  say  that  the  intention  always  to  be  courageous  is 
equivalent  to  the  unfailing  virtue  of  courage  ?  We  can 
scarcely  claim  that  the  man  who  fully  intends  to  do  any 
particular  brave  and  virtuous  deed,  but  who  fails  through 
fear  in  the  hour  of  execution,  is  as  good  and  meritorious 
a  man  as  he  who  both  intends  to  be  brave  and  courageously 
carries  into  effect  the  brave  intention. 

It  seems,  then,  that  the  virtue  of  habitually  intending 
well  is  a  kind  of  deliberative  and  voluntary  wisdom;  and 
that  this  virtue  properly  emphasizes  the  duty  of  man  to  plan 
his  conduct,  wherever  this  is  possible,  so  as  to  put  his  moral 
reason  and  right  resolve  into  appropriate  action,  when  the 
time  for  action  arrives.  But  the  conception  which  the 
ethical  use  of  the  word  "  Intention  "  covers  is  of  compara- 
tively little  assistance  in  our  search  for  the  bond  of  unity 
which  unites  all  the  virtues  into  one  idea  of  Virtue. 

The  second  way  of  unifying  theoretically  the  virtues  main- 
tains that  some  one  among  them  all  is  so  comprehensive  in 


350  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

character,  and  so  supremely  magisterial,  that  it  includes  and 
dominates  all  the  rest.  Such  a  claim  may  be  pushed  so  far 
as  to  assert  that  some  one  Virtue  is,  essentially  considered, 
all  the  virtues  in  one.  Thus  he  who  has  that  one  virtue  to 
perfection  exercises  them  all  in  perfection;  —  not,  indeed, 
because  he  can  dispense  with  any  one  of  them,  but  rather 
because  he  already  in  essence  possesses  them  all.  In  modern 
systems  of  ethics  the  virtue  which  is  thought  most  fit  to  be 
intrusted  with  this  comprehensive  supremacy  is,  of  course. 
Benevolence.  Thus  this  particular  virtue  is  converted  into 
a  general,  all-inclusive  virtuousness.  And  if  a  somewhat 
theological  caste  is  given  to  the  conception,  the  word  Love 
may  be  adopted  in  its  stead.  The  summary  of  all  the  vir- 
tues is  then  expressed  in  "  The  Law  of  Love  and  Love  as  a 
Law."  For  are  we  not  told  on  the  best  of  authority  that 
the  two  commandments  on  which  "hang  all  the  law  and  the 
prophets'*  are :  —  "  Thou  shalt  love  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all 
thy  heart,  and  with  all  thy  soul,  and  with  all  thy  mind ; " 
and,  "  Thou  shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself "  ?  Love, 
then,  is  the  fulfilling  of  the  whole  moral  law. 

But  before  adopting  somewhat  too  rashly  the  ethical  theory 
which  identifies  the  virtuousness  of  all  the  virtues  with  the 
one  virtue  of  benevolence,  one  may  profitably  consider  the 
exact  nature  of  the  proposal.  If  "  the  law  and  the  prophets  " 
be  themselves  inquired  of  in  order  to  determine  more  pre- 
cisely their  own  most  elevated  and  comprehensive  conception 
of  morality,  they  return  such  answers  as  the  following: 
"And  now,  Israel,  what  doth  the  Lord  thy  God  require  of 
thee,  but  to  fear  the  Lord  thy  God,  to  walk  in  all  his  ways, 
and  to  love  him,  and  to  serve  the  Lord  thy  God  with  all  thy 
heart  and  all  thy  soul ; "  i  and,  again,  "  He  hath  showed  thee, 
O  man,  what  is  good;  and  what  doth  the  Lord  require  of 
thee,  but  to  do  justly,  and  to  love  mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly 
with  thy  God. "  2    These  are  the  utterances  of  a  monotheistic 

1  Deut.  X,  12.  2  Mic.  vi,  8. 


THE  UNITY  OF  VIRTUE  851 

religion  in  which  the  Deity  is  conceived  of  as  the  Source,  the 
Arbiter,  and  the  Ideal,  of  perfect  righteousness.  No  wonder, 
then,  that  an  attitude  of  loyal  and  passionate  devotion  to  his 
service,  conceived  of  as  an  intelligent  and  principled  per- 
sonal affection,  should  seem  to  be  a  sufficient  motive  to  the 
practice  of  every  form  of  that  which  ethics  conceives  of  as 
the  Virtuous  Life.  It  should  not  be  forgotten,  moreover, 
that  the  first  of  the  passages  just  quoted  has  reference  partic- 
ularly to  the  keeping  of  the  Mosaic  Law  with  its  elaborate 
"  commandments  and  statutes  "  having  reference  to  domestic, 
social,  and  civil  relations,  and  appealing  to  every  cardinal 
virtue  in  the  entire  catalogue  current  at  the  time;  while 
the  exhortation  of  the  prophet  especially  emphasizes  the 
justice,  mercy,  and  humility,  which  were  at  the  time  —  as 
always  in  human  history  —  particularly  needed,  and  con- 
spicuously lacking,  on  the  part  of  the  rich  and  the  powerful. 
For  it  was  a  time  when  men  devised  iniquity  at  night  and 
executed  it  with  the  morning  light :  "  And  they  covet  fields, 
and  take  them  by  violence ;  and  houses  and  take  them  away : 
so  they  oppress  a  man  and  his  house,  even  a  man  and  his 
heritage".  .  .  "because  it  is  in  the  power  of  their  hand."  ^ 
Here  is  surely  a  tolerably  comprehensive  list  of  virtues  and 
vices,  the  former  of  which  would  be  motived  and  secured 
by  the  love  and  fear  and  obedience  of  Yahveh,  the  god  of 
righteousness,  and  the  latter  of  which  would  be  obstructed 
and  prevented  by  the  same  love,  fear,  and  obedience. 

Finally,  it  should  also  be  borne  in  mind  that  the  entire  list 
of  concrete  and  particular  virtues,  with  the  illustrative  ex- 
amples given  in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  is  summarized 
by  their  author  in  the  exhortation :  "  Be  ye  therefore  perfect, 
even  as  your  Father  which  is  in  heaven  is  perfect."  As  to 
the  truthfulness  and  value  of  this  religious  doctrine  of  per- 
fect morality,  I  shall  have  occasion  to  refer  hereafter.  But 
surely  this  is  a  very  different  tenet  from  the  identification, 

1  Mic.  ii,  2. 


352  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

in  ethics,  of  the  virtue  of  benevolence  with  the  virtuousness 
of  all  the  virtues. 

Is  benevolence  properly  conceived  of  as  the  one  absolute 
and  all-inclusive  virtue  ?  The  affirmative  answer  to  this 
question  either  compels  us  to  extend  unwarrantably  the 
meaning  of  the  term  "benevolence,"  or  else  leaves  us  with 
the  same  complex  and  confused  conception  as  to  the  essen- 
tial nature  of  virtue,  and  as  to  the  bond  of  unity  among  the 
different  virtues.  In  the  most  expanded  form  of  its  proper 
ethical  significance,  this  virtue  is  an  active  well-wishing,  a 
desiring  and  planning  for  the  good  of  our  fellow-men  (comp. 
p.  331).  When  this  virtue  is  represented  by  the  word 
"love"  and  identified  in  its  essential  virtuous  quality  with 
that  attitude  which  religion  considers  to  be  due  from  man  to 
God,  an  almost  complete  change  of  its  psychological  char- 
acteristics is  silently  but  suggestively  introduced.  For  it  is 
decidedly  not  a  virtue  for  any  one  to  love  all  men  alike,  or 
with  the  like  kind  of  affection  {e.g.,  the  domestic,  friendly, 
admiring,  etc.,  sort  of  love).  Nor  is  it  virtuous  for  me  to 
love  any  human  being  with  all  my  mind  and  soul.  On  the 
other  hand,  there  seems  something  quite  inappropriate  and 
savoring  of  the  aesthetically,  if  not  of  the  ethically,  unseemly, 
to  regard  it  as  a  virtue  in  man  to  cultivate  "  benevolence  " 
toward  God. 

What,  moreover,  is  this  good  which  I  ought  to  desire  and 
plan  for  every  man,  if  I  am  to  exercise  benevolence  in  such 
a  way  as  to  include  in  it  all  the  other  forms  of  virtuous  liv- 
ing ?  Eudaemonism,  even  in  its  most  refined  forms  would 
have  to  say :  It  is  happiness ;  for  happiness  is,  first  and  last, 
the  only  and  all-inclusive  good  for  every  man.  But  justice 
and  wisdom  often  require  me  not  to  desire  and  plan  for  this 
kind  of  good,  either  for  myself  or  for  some  one  else,  so  far 
as  the  concrete  and  individual  case  is  concerned.  And  if 
the  modification  is  added  —  "for  the  greatest  number  and  in 
the  long  run  '*  (a  general  benevolence  or  "  love  of  being  in 


THE  UNITY  OF  VIRTUE  353 

general  ") ;  then  the  vagueness  and  worthlessness  of  the 
entire  conception  are  made  apparent  as  soon  as  it  is  brought 
to  the  actual  test  of  a  working  principle.  Distinctly,  I  am 
not  going  to  desire  and  plan  to  have  all  my  fellow-men 
happy,  unless  they  themselves  fulfil  the  fundamental  ethical 
conditions  of  a  limited  happiness ;  and  I  am  very  sure  that 
these  ethical  conditions  themselves  are  going,  so  long  as 
they  are  not  essentially  and  even  inconceivably  altered,  to 
set  unavoidable  limits  to  human  happiness. 

Even  Lotze  is  hopelessly  confused  and  unintelligible  in 
his  conception  of  benevolence  as  affording  the  unity  of  all 
the  virtues.  For,  after  defining  this  virtue  as  that  piety 
which  "considerately  allows"  the  undisturbed  development 
of  spirits  in  their  relations  to  spirits,  he  regards  retribution 
as  also  agreeable  to  moral  consciousness.  And,  then,  having 
shown  that  pleasure-pains  as  the  consequences  of  conduct 
are  essential  to  all  moral  judgment,  he  appeals  to  an  intui- 
tion of  conscience  to  show  "  that  it  is  not  the  effort  after  our 
own,  but  only  that  for  the  production  of  another's  felicity, 
which  is  ethically  meritorious ;  —  and,  accordingly,  that  the 
idea  of  benevolence  must  give  us  the  sole  supreme  principle 
of  moral  conduct. "  ^  But  I  do  not  so  read  moral  conscious- 
ness ;  at  least,  I  do  not  so  read  its  conclusions  in  any  such 
off-hand  manner.  As  is  customary  with  all  advocates  of 
this  theory,  Lotze's  conception  of  benevolence  is  quite  too 
vague  to  correspond  to  any  definite  manifestation  or  attitude 
of  the  Moral  Self  toward  others;  and  his  identification  of 
benevolence,  on  the  authority  of  conscience,  with  the  vir- 
tuousness  of  all  virtues  is  not  in  accordance  with  the  univer- 
sal moral  feeling  and  judgment,  even  when  considered  from 
the  higher  point  of  view  to  which  man  is  rising  in  his  moral 
evolution. 

The  best  possible  case  is,  however,  made  out  for  the  all- 
inclusive  nature  of  benevolence  when  the  object  of  its  wish- 

1  Outlines  of  Practical  Philosophy,  p.  28-34. 


354  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

ing  and  planning  is  the  welfare^  including  especially  the 
moral  development  and  perfection,  of  all  mankind.  I  may 
not  virtuously  wish  the  bad  man  to  be  happy.  On  the  con- 
trary, I  may  be,  in  fidelity  to  virtuous  principle,  bound  to 
wish  and  to  plan  to  make  him  very  unhappy.  But  I  may 
virtuously  wish  him  to  become  good,  that  we  together,  as 
brethren  in  one  high  purpose,  may  follow,  each  in  his  own 
individual'  appointed  way,  the  Moral  Ideal.  The  highest 
benevolence  will  include — will  chiefly  be,  just  such  a  wishing 
and  planning  as  this.  What  more  than  such  an  habitual 
temper  of  bene-volence,  or  well-wishing,  as  this  can  the 
complete  Virtuous  Life  demand  or  even  suggest  ? 

I  have  elsewhere  (p.  326  f.)  referred  to  this  lofty  spirit  of 
wishing  and  planning  for  the  highest  welfare  of  all  sorts  and 
conditions  of  men  as  the  choicest  result  of  poetry,  philos- 
ophy, and  religion  in  their  influence  upon  the  moral  evolu- 
tion of  the  race.  Such  so-called  "  benevolence  "  includes  the 
uplift  of  imaginative  insight,  —  the  far-away  look  into  the 
future  of  the  race,  the  acquaintance  with  the  history  of  its 
past  evolution  and  with  the  conditions  of  its  future  improve- 
ment, and,  above  all,  that  estimate  of  the  great  worth  of  the 
individual  soul  and  of  a  human  society  which  shall  consist 
of  multitudes  of  such  souls  when  morally  improved  and 
perfected.  The  most  kindly  and  sympathetic  savages  are 
quite  incapable  of  all  this.  Even  Plato  and  Aristotle,  with 
all  their  noble  conceptions  of  the  virtues  of  friendship  and 
of  philanthropy  failed  to  rise  to  such  heights  as  those  where 
these  conceptions  and  ideals  are  powerful. 

Yet  the  same  difficulties  recur  when  the  effort  is  made 
theoretically  to  reduce  all  the  particular  virtues  to  this  one 
virtuous  attitude  of  well-wishing  and  planning  for  the 
highest  welfare  of  mankind.  And  the  difficulties  seem  to 
be  due  to  the  very  nature  of  the  Moral  Self ;  they  persist,  in 
part,  because  wishing  and  planning,  even  when  extended 
and  organized  into  choice  of  a  course  of  conduct,  do  not 


.THE  UNITY  OF  VIRTUE  355 

cover  properly  all  the  functioning  of  such  a  self.  Nor  does 
the  whole  of  virtuous  living  consist  for  any  individual  in 
planning  and  wishing  for  the  most  desirable  end  of  others* 
happiness  or  welfare.  In  order  to  the  perfection  of  benevo- 
lence itself  the  moral  judgment  of  men  requires  all  the 
other  most  cardinal  virtues,  both  of  will  and  of  judgment. 
All  these  other  cardinal  virtues  qualify  benevolence,  as 
benevolence  employs,  consecrates,  and  qualifies  them.  Be- 
nevolence itself  must  be  courageous  in  its  expression  where 
the  beneficent  conduct  which  it  motives  is  destined  to 
encounter  any  kind  of  fear.  Especially  do  we  require  of 
this  virtue  that  dependableness  which  is  the  product  of  the 
virtue  of  the  will  called  constancy;  and  for  which,  as  such, 
there  is  not  wanting  a  certain  ethical  admiration,  even  when 
it  becomes  a  steadfast  commitment  to  a  wrong  cause.  Even 
the  wishing  and  planning  for  the  highest  welfare  of  mankind 
in  general  —  nay,  just  this  especially  —  needs  indomitable 
courage  and  steadfast  fidelity  to  make  it  complete.  No 
advance  is  made,  however,  when  the  claim  is  raised  that 
only  courageous  and  constant  benevolence  is  real  benevo- 
lence. For  the  answer  is  at  the  same  time  suggested  and 
justified  by  the  question:  benevolence,  then,  plainly  needs 
courage  and  constancy  in  order  to  become  perfected  in  its 
own  reality,  and  this  seems  the  same  thing  as  to  say  that 
the  latter  virtues  qualify  and  complement  the  former,  in  the 
unity  of  the  Virtuous  Life.  As  says  Hegel :  "  True  character 
involves  on  the  one  hand  an  essential  import  in  its  purpose ; 
on  the  other  hand,  adherence  to  that  purpose  such  that  the 
individuality  would  be  robbed  of  its  whole  existence,  if 
forced  to  desist  from  and  to  abandon  it. "  "  This  stability 
and  substance  constitute  the  key-note  of  character.  "^ 

It  is  doubtless  easier  to  make  a  fair  show  of  proving  that 
such  virtues  as  temperance  are  only  applications  of  the  one 
all-inclusive  virtue  of  benevolence.     Yet  I  am  by  no  means 

1  See  Hegel,  On  Fine  Art,  Bosanqnet's  Translation,  p.  129. 


856  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

sure  that  some  fallacy  is  not  lurking  in  the  argument  here. 
Many  virtuous  acts  which  fall  under  the  general  notion  of 
self-control  over  the  impulses,  appetites,  and  desires,  are 
certainly  relative.  Their  virtuousness  mainly,  if  not  wholly, 
depends  upon  the  character  of  the  social  consequences  which 
follow  from  them,  as  a  rule.  In  the  narrower  meaning  of 
the  word  chastity,  for  example,  as  involving  virtuous  control 
over  the  sexual  instincts  and  passions,  the  actual  limits  of 
such  control  are,  in  fact,  exceedingly  indefinite.  In  the 
large  they  may  be  said  to  be  determinable  only  by  considera- 
tion for  the  welfare  of  society.  In  the  regulation  also  of 
one's  appetite  for  food  and  drink,  and  in  the  matter  of 
securing  and  maintaining  bodily  health,  the  law  of  regard 
for  the  highest  social  welfare  is  very  properly  emphasized. 
Why,  however,  shall  one  say  that  preserving  health  by 
chastity  is  always  a  virtue;  and  that  sacrificing  health 
sometimes  —  as  in  the  case  of  the  faithful  mother,  nurse,  or 
physician  —  is  also  a  virtue?  How  far  rightfully  may  the 
demands  go  for  sacrifice  of  Self  in  the  interests  of  society  ? 
These,  it  seems  to  me,  are  questions  which  the  benevolence 
theory  can  never  answer  with  a  complete  satisfaction.  For 
at  a  certain  point  the  theory  is  always  met  by  certain  limita- 
tions which  moral  reason  imposes  in  the  name  of  the  other 
virtues,  —  even  such  as  temperance,  wisdom,  and  justice. 

Benevolence  itself  may  become  an  absorbing  passion.  The 
enthusiasm  of  humanity,  like  the  scientific  zeal  for  truth,  may 
carry  the  soul  and  body  of  the  enthusiast  beyond  the  limits 
of  a  temperate  and  wise  self-control.  And  then  the  student 
of  ethics  who  wills  to  face  steadily  its  most  profound  and 
dark  philosophical  problems  may  return  to  ask  of  it  anew 
certain  pressing,  though  perhaps  unanswerable  questions. 
After  all,  am  not  I,  too,  a  Self  ?  —  only  one,  among  a  vast 
multitude  of  other  selves,  it  is  true ;  and  yet  one  Self,  And 
is  there  not  that  in  me,  and  belonging  by  right  of  my  very 
selfhood  to  me,  which  I  am  not  virtuous,  not  true  to  the 


THE  UNITY  OF  VIRTUE  B6T 

nature  of  a  Self,  if  I  surrender  or  disturb?  At  times  this 
devotion  to  the  good  of  others  seems  to  threaten  the  supreme 
and  inalienable  rights  of  one's  own  soul.  In  view  of  this 
threat,  as  well  as  in  view  of  the  highest  ideals  before  the 
individual  soul,  Aristotle  and  other  philosophers,  both 
ancient  and  modern,  have  made  reflective  thinking  or  phil- 
osophy itself  the  highest  form  of  virtue.  In  view  of  similar 
considerations,  not  only  the  Hindu  and  Buddhist  devotees 
but  also  many  Christian  ascetics  and  monks  have  withdrawn 
from  society  in  the  interests  of  the  higher  ethics  —  the  spiri- 
tual life  of  the  individual  soul.  The  lonely  Jew  Spinoza, 
isolated  so  largely  from  all  social  interests,  concludes  his 
Ethic  with  the  demonstration  that  the  intellectual  love  of 
God,  which  is  blessedness,  is  "not  the  reward  of  virtue,  but 
is  virtue  itself."  It  is  "the  highest  good  we  can  seek  accord- 
ing to  the  dictate  of  reason ; "  and  although  it  is  "  common 
to  all  men  and  we  desire  that  all  may  enjoy  it,"  the  virtuous- 
ness  of  this  virtue  does  not  consist  in  the  desire  for  others 
but  in  the  intellectual  love  itself.  ^  Such  theoretical  construc- 
tions of  virtue  as  these  are,  indeed,  quite  foreign  to  the  spirit 
and  the  doctrine  of  the  Modern  Occidental  World ;  and  they 
are  not  mentioned  here  in  order  wholly  to  commend  — 
much  less  to  rehabilitate  and  reinstate  them.  But  they  rep- 
resent a  side  of  the  fcruth  sought  by  the  philosophy  of  con- 
duct which  is  perhaps  too  little  regarded  at  the  present  time. 
Every  man  must  save  his  own  soul ;  nor  can  he  surely  and 
wholly  save  it  by  the  utmost  of  wishing  and  planning  for  the 
welfare  of  others. 

And  now  the  proposal  is  made  so  to  extend  the  conception 
of  benevolence  as  to  have  it  apply,  on  terms  of  personal 
equality  as  it  were,  to  one's  own  self  as  well  as  to  other 
selves.  The  perfect  exercise  of  this  virtue  would  then  secure 
the  wishing  and  planning  for  one's  own  highest  welfare  as 
included  in  the  welfare  of  mankind  generally.  Such  a  pro- 
1  Ethic,  Fifth  Part,  Prop.  XX  and  XLIL 


358  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

posal  certainly  strikes  the  common-sense  of  mankind  as  a 
somewhat  fantastic  modification  of  the  current  and  appro- 
priate meaning  of  ethical  terms.  Indeed,  on  examination  it 
also  appears  to  conceal  a  kind  of  twist  to  the  conceptions 
themselves.  If  by  welfare  one  simply  means  happiness, 
then  the  desire  and  planning  for  one's  own  happiness  is  only 
doubtfully  to  be  called  a  virtue  in  any  case.  Have  we  not 
been  told  by  Lotze  (see  p.  353)  that  benevolence,  considered 
as  the  one  all-sufficing  virtue,  is  ''not  the  effort  after  our 
own,  but  only  that  for  the  production  of  another's  felicity?  " 
Suppose,  however,  that  by  welfare  one  means  also,  and 
especially,  the  highest  welfare,  which  from  the  purely  ethical 
point  of  view  is  the  attainment  for  the  Moral  Self  of  the  per- 
fect Virtuous  Life;  then  indeed  one  may  say  that  wishing 
and  planning  for  this  is  the  most  comprehensive  of  virtues 
and,  in  some  sort,  includes  all  the  virtuous  quality  of  all  the 
other  particular  virtues.  Only  now  we  have  arrived,  by  a 
process  of  enhancing  the  content  of  the  conception  of  benev- 
olence, at  a  result  which  essentially  alters  its  entire  meaning. 
Properly,  the  virtue  of  benevolence  consists  in  wishing  and 
planning  for  the  welfare  of  other  men ;  in  this  meaning  of 
the  word,  benevolence  is  the  powerful  corrective  of  the  too 
exclusive  wishing  and  planning  for  one's  own  welfare.  All 
of  which  paradox  will  have  to  be  resolved,  so  far  as  its 
resolution  is  possible  at  all,  by  considerations  connected 
with  the  fundamental  truth  that  an  isolated  Moral  Self  is 
a  monstrosity, — impossible  even  of  conception  —  and  that 
society  is  an  essential  condition  of  the  individual's  moral 
life  and  moral  development. 

Once  more,  then,  the  discussion  must  return  to  the  thought 
that  wishing  and  planning  for  the  welfare,  whether  of  our- 
selves or  of  others,  is  not  the  whole  of  man's  virtuous  living. 
Benevolence,  even  in  its  most  comprehensive  exhibition  as  a 
virtue,  must  be  infused  with  the  cardinal  virtues  of  judgment. 
It  must  be  wise,  and  just,  and  conformed  in  a  voluntary  and 


THE   UNITY  OF   VIRTUE  359 

rational  way  to  the  facts  and  principles  of  Reality.  Indeed, 
so  far  as  human  wishing  and  willing  have  reference  to  the 
higher  welfare  as  their  object,  they  imply  the  reference  also  to 
some  standard  which  shall  determine  a  place  for  each  form 
of  good  in  a  scale  of  values.  The  best  benevolence  desires 
what  is  best  for  every  self  in  its  various  changing  relations 
to  a  social  organization  of  selves.  But  who  shall  determine 
that  which  is  best  —  either  in  general,  or  in  any  case  of  a 
particular  and  concrete  problem  for  the  judgment  ?  If  the 
problem  be  one  concerning  the  ends  to  be  chosen,  or  the 
means  to  be  selected,  then  the  virtue  answering  to  its 
morally  satisfactory  solution  is  wisdom ;  if  the  problem  be 
one  of  distributing  good  and  evil  among  men  according  to 
their  desert,  then  the  corresponding  virtue  is  justness. 
Benevolence  wishes  to  employ  justness  and  wisdom  in  carry- 
ing out  its  supreme  desire  and  plan  to  secure  the  welfare  of 
all  mankind.  Benevolence,  then,  has  need  of  wisdom  and 
justness  in  order  to  complete  its  own  virtuous  quality.  The 
idea  of  rational  measure  is  required  as  an  added  ethical  qualifi- 
cation in  connection  with  benevolence  itself.  That  justice  which 
is  "  half  of  honor  —  and  honor  and  justice  are  two-thirds  of 
purity "  —  is  a  necessary  supplement  to  benevolence,  and 
cannot  be  merged  in  it.  It  is  this  fact  which  has  led  so 
many  writers  on  ethics  to  regard  "  justice  "  {hiKaiocrvvr])  as 
the  complete  and  all-inclusive  virtue.  The  same  thing  is 
true  of  the  wisdom  which  Plato  exalted  to  the  place  of 
supremacy.  But  in  the  ethical  theory  of  Old  Japan,  benevo- 
lence, justice,  and  wisdom  all  yield  the  crown  to  the 
consummate  virtue  of  Fidelity. 

The  relation  of  trueness  to  benevolence  in  the  system  of 
the  virtues  is  somewhat  similar  to  that  in  which  temperance 
stands  to  benevolence.  But  it  is  even  more  fundamental.  Is 
trueness,  as  it  has  already  been  described  (p.  295  f.),  a  species 
of  conduct  whose  virtuous  quality  can  all  be  resolved  into 
benevolence  ?    Certainly  not.     I  am  not  now  about  to  dis- 


360  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

cuss  the  more  casuistical  question  whether  a  lie,  under  cer- 
tain prescribed  circumstances,  may  be  consistent  with,  or 
even  demanded  by,  the  virtue  of  benevolence.  Nor  is  it  pro- 
posed to  criticise  such  statements  as  the  following  from  Mr. 
Leslie  Stephen : ^  "If  in  some  distant  planet  lying  were  as 
essential  to  human  welfare  as  truthfulness  is  in  this  world, 
falsehood  might  there  be  a  cardinal  virtue. "  I  only  inter- 
rupt the  argument  to  suggest  these  three  inquiries :  (1)  What 
would  distance  or  difference  in  the  physical  constitution  of 
its  environment  have  to  do  with  the  moral  nature  or  the  social 
effect  of  lying,  in  case  the  nature  and  the  spiritual  relations 
of  moral  selves  remained  the  same  ?  (2)  If  we  agree  with 
Mr.  Stephen  in  making  the  end  of  conduct  —  namely,  "  human 
welfare  "  —  synonymous  with  happiness,  do  we  not  find  our- 
selves obliged  to  admit  that  an  immense  amount  of  falsehood 
is  "essential  to  human  welfare,"  —  almost  as  essential  as 
truthfulness  is,  in  this  world  even  ?  And  (3),  how  can  false- 
hood be  regarded  as  a  "  cardinal  virtue  "  —  however  permis- 
sible or  pardonable  as  a  species  of  kindness  or  politeness 
—  without  so  undermining  the  very  structure  of  the  rational 
selfhood,  and  of  society  as  a  community  of  moral  selves, 
as  to  render  all  virtue  nugatory  and  inconceivable  ?  In  a 
word,  the  hypothesis  of  Mr.  Stephen  seems  to  me  to  re- 
semble that  of  John  Stuart  Mill  with  reference  to  some  con- 
ceivable condition  in  which  space  is  still  three-dimensioned, 
but  parallel  lines  are  habitually  seen  to  meet.  Even  in  the 
philosophy  of  conduct,  however,  analytical  axioms  must  not 
be  unwarrantably  converted  into  synthetic  judgments  a  priori. 
You  cannot  at  the  same  time  keep  your  three-dimensioned 
space,  and  your  Euclidean  geometry,  and  also  utterly  destroy 
its  essential  characteristics.  You  cannot  posit  Moral  Selves 
in  a  social  community  and  then  suppose  them  to  be  trans- 
muted by  some  change  of  place  or  physical  environment  into 
a  totally  unlike  Moral  Selfhood. 

1  Science  of  Ethics,  p.  153  f. 


THE  UNITY  OF  VIRTUE  861 

The  adjusting  of  one's  rational  position  by  an  act  of  judg- 
ment to  the  facts  and  principles  of  Reality  is,  I  believe,  for 
a  rational  and  moral  being  a  virtue  which  can  never  be 
resolved  into  any  form  of  well-wishing  toward  other  beings. 
Granted  that  falsification  may  sometimes  be  a  virtue;  and 
if  the  motive  be  regard  for  the  well-being  of  others,  call  the 
falsehood  an  act  of  benevolence,  if  you  please.  And  still,  it 
seems  to  me,  you  have  not  essentially  altered  the  state  of  the 
case;  you  have  not  at  all  changed  the  principles  involved. 
Benevolence  may  be  the  virtue  which,  in  the  conflict,  gets 
the  victory,  while  a  particular  manifestation  of  the  virtue 
of  trueness  temporarily  goes  to  the  wall.  But  the  duty  of 
rational  man  to  frame  his  judgments  according  to  the  facts 
and  principles  of  Reality  remains  unchanged;  and  the 
cardinal  character  of  the  virtue  of  doing  this  remains 
unimpaired. 

In  a  word,  the  argument  always  seems  to  come  circling 
around  to  the  point  of  starting  again.  Benevolence  is  indeed 
an  important  and  cardinal  virtue ;  but  it  is  only  one  of  the 
virtues,  and  it  must  itself  be  supplemented  and  completed  by 
the  others  —  by  constancy,  wisdom,  justness,  and  trueness  — 
if  ethics  is  to  depict  in  its  perfection  the  Virtuous  Life. 

This  circle  in  the  argument  has,  however,  its  own  most 
important  suggestion  to  make.  The  suggestion  is  this :  the 
student  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct  should  concentrate  his 
regard  upon  the  one  conception  corresponding  to  that  unitary 
being  about  which  the  circle  has  been  drawn.  This  is  the 
being  of  the  Moral  Self.  It  is  the  conception  of  such  a  being 
in  which  he  must  find  the  true  principle  for  the  unification 
of  all  the  virtues.  The  unity  of  the  virtues  is  due  to  the  unity 
of  a  personality^  in  active  and  varied  relations  with  other  per- 
sons. This  is  a  unity  of  no  mechanical  or  merely  conceptual 
sort;  it  is  neither  like  the  unity  of  a  piece  of  mechanism  nor 
like  the  unity  which  the  process  of  logical  abstraction  pre- 
pares in  order  to  cover  an  entire  species    consisting  of 


362  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

individuals.  One  sheep  is  like  another,  although  one 
may  be  white  and  another  black,  one  with  long  wool  and 
one  with  short.  But  wisdom  is  not  like  courage,  tem- 
perance is  not  a  species  of  kindness,  and  justness  and  true- 
ness  are  not  to  be  reduced  to  benevolence.  This  many-sided 
being  called  man  is  the  virtuous  or  the  vicious  one;  his 
possible  virtues  and  vices  are  as  many  as  the  forms  of  his 
action  that  are  in  any  measure  subject  to  intelligent  control. 
He  is  set  in  society  as  the  incitement  and  environment  of 
his  moral  development;  and  his  social  relations  are  as 
indefinite  in  number  as  they  are  variable  in  kind.  Now 
he  is  angry,  and  now  he  is  pleased ;  now  he  loves  and  then 
again  he  hates ;  now  he  is  called  upon  to  summon  courage, 
now  to  exercise  wisdom,  and  now  to  let  himself  melt  with 
the  spirit  of  kindness.  He  is  parent  or  child,  brother  or 
sister,  subject  or  ruler,  employer  or  employed  —  a  companion 
of  friends,  a  fighter  with  other  comrades  against  a  common 
foe,  connected  with  many  societies  and  guilds,  citizen  of 
some  State  or  member  of  some  tribe,  and  always  potentially 
a  citizen  of  an  invisible  and  heavenly  community. 

In  all  these  varying  relations,  and  on  all  these  many 
sides,  the  Moral  Self  is  seeking  many  different  forms  of 
good,  and  is  trying  to  escape  or  bravely  to  endure  many 
different  forms  of  evil.  In  all  this  search  and  effort  the 
individual  man  is  only  one  of  many,  a  unit  in  a  larger 
social  multiplicity,  which  is  itself  also  a  sort  of  unit  rela- 
tively to  other  higher  unities.  No  one  virtuous  quality  will 
suffice  on  all  occasions,  or  for  the  satisfactory  discharge  of 
all  the  functions  belonging  to  these  differing  relations ;  nor 
can  any  man,  however  wise,  always  tell  which  one  of  several 
virtues  it  is  fitting  to  display. 

Shall  we,  then,  abandon  all  hope  of  discovering  any  prin- 
ciple of  unity  among  the  virtues  ?  Shall  we  confess  that, 
while  we  can  confidently  declare,  in  accordance  with  the 
common  consciousness  of  mankind,   our    adherence  to  the 


THE   UNITY  OF  VIRTUE  363 

virtuous  character  of  courage,  constancy,  wisdom,  justice, 
and  kindness,  yet  we  are  quite  unable  to  say  in  what  the 
virtuousness  of  them  all  consists  ?  Must  we  conclude  with 
Meno:  "Every  age,  every  condition  of  life,  young  or  old, 
male  or  female,  bond  or  free,  has  a  different  virtue:  there 
are  virtues  numberless,  and  no  lack  of  definitions  of  them ; 
for  virtue  is  relative  to  the  actions  and  ages  of  each  of  us  in 
all  that  we  do  ?  "  Or,  must  we  all  "  confess  with  shame,"  as 
does  Socrates :  "  I  know  literally  nothing  about  virtue ;  and 
when  I  do  not  know  the  '  quid  *  of  anything,  how  can  I  know 
the  '  quale  '  ?  "  Not  so ;  or,  at  any  rate.  Not  yet.  But  the 
search  for  the  ultimate  unifying  truths  and  conceptions,  if 
any  such  are  to  be  found,  must  go  much  deeper  down  into 
the  heart  of  Reality,  much  further  abroad  in  the  kingdom  of 
Truth. 

One  unifying  conception  of  great  significance  and  power 
has,  however,  already  been  attained.  All  the  discoverable 
virtues  are  partial  harmonies,  or  single  notes  accordant  with 
the  Moral  Ideal.  And  that  ideal  is  a  Self  living  the  Virtuous 
Life  in  social  relations  with  other  selves.  The  effort  to 
realize  this  ideal  furnishes  to  each  one  in  a  fragmentary  way 
his  bit  of  the  principle  of  unification  which,  so  far  as  it  is 
adopted  and  applied,  tends  to  bring  his  own  inner  life,  at 
any  rate,  into  the  unity  of  a  harmonious  whole. 

The  alleged  unity  of  virtue  thus  becomes  the  fidelity  of 
the  one  and  total  personality  —  the  unitary  being  called  a 
Moral  Self  —  to  the  Moral  Ideal.  But  this  unity  is  subjec- 
tive and  lies  in  the  nature  of  moral  personality  rather  than 
in  the  nature  of  virtue  —  as  though  "  Virtue  "  could  represent 
anything  more  than  an  abstraction  from  the  characteristic 
tendencies  and  conscious  states  of  this  Self.  For  any  objec- 
tive unity  we  must  look,  not  to  the  nature  of  virtue,  but  to 
the  Nature  of  Reality.  But  the  subject  still  awaits  further 
and  more  satisfactory  discussion. 

It  should  be  joyfully  noticed  in  this  connection  how  much 


364  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

opportunity  for  the  development  of  Individuality  this  view  of 
the  unity  of  virtue  permits  to  every  man.  Virtuous  living 
is  not  living  in  conformity  to  any  one  pattern  of  conduct. 
It  is  no  dead  monotonous  agreement  in  a  sort  of  common 
stock  of  virtues,  from  which  each  man  may  win  more  or  less 
for  himself.  The  Virtuous  Life  has  all  the  variety  which 
belongs  to  the  beings  who  lead  the  life ;  and  of  them  no  two 
are  alike.  No  man's  list  either  of  virtues  or  of  vices  pre- 
cisely resembles  that  of  any  other  man.  Indeed,  no  man's 
anger,  or  pride,  or  courage,  or  wisdom,  or  justice,  or  kind- 
ness, is  precisely  the  counterpart  of  the  same  qualities  in 
another.  For  the  unity  is  in  and  of  each  individual  self- 
hood. And  this  is  a  unity  that  emphasizes  endless  vari- 
ability —  even  in  the  Ideal  toward  which  it  strives. 


CHAPTER  Xy 

DUTY  AND  MORAL  LAW 

There  are  certain  aspects  of  man's  moral  consciousness, 
the  experience  and  the  contemplation  of  which  give  rise  to 
conceptions  that  are  in  important  ways  different  from  those 
already  considered.  Of  such  conceptions  the  two  most  sug- 
gestive and  fundamental  are  Duty  and  Moral  Law.  Accord- 
ing to  the  modern  enlightened  conscience,  at  any  rate,  the 
life  of  virtue  can  be  led  only  by  the  man  who  does  his  duty, 
and  is  obedient  to  the  moral  code.  Indeed,  the  question 
may  be  raised  whether  the  complete  doing  of  one's  duty,  and 
perfect  obedience  to  that  law  which  commands  the  right  and 
forbids  the  wrong,  would  not  be  tantamount  to  attaining 
moral  perfection.  The  value  of  the  animus  which  attaches 
itself  to  these  two  conceptions  can  scarcely  be  overestimated ; 
and  to  trace  the  history  of  their  evolution  and  elevation 
in  human  moral  consciousness  is  equivalent  to  following 
along  the  main  lines  of  the  moral  progress  of  the  race.  For 
it  is  in  respect  of  improved  and  enlarged  conceptions  of  Law, 
and  more  severe  and  exacting  conceptions  of  Duty,  rather 
than  of  altered  appreciations  of  the  virtues,  that  the  moral 
progress  of  man  has  consisted  hitherto. 

It  must  be  admitted,  however,  that  the  moment  one  begins 
the  effort  to  derive  a  theory  of  the  virtues,  or  a  theory  of  the 
nature  of  the  right,  from  men's  notions  of  duty  or  of  that 
which  some  writers  are  pleased  to  call  the  moral  law  one 
becomes  involved  in  manifold  embarrassments,  —  not  to  say, 
hopelessly   insoluble    puzzles.     The   reason  for  this   is  not 


366  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

difficult  to  discover.  Duty  and  moral  law  are  extremely 
abstract  and  intangible  conceptions.  They  summarize  a  cer- 
tain complex  attitude  of  the  Moral  Self  toward  one  of  its  own 
ideal  constructions,  rather  than  the  definite  marks  of  some  class 
of  concrete  objects  or  the  common  factors  of  definitely  similar 
experiences.  They  are  themselves  comparatively  late  devel- 
opments ;  although  the  basis  for  them  is,  of  course,  laid  in  the 
most  universal  and  fundamental  facts  of  human  experience. 
Here  again,  the  particular  and  the  concrete,  with  all  its 
variety  and  subtile  texture,  comes  first ;  and  the  abstract,  the 
formulated,  the  attempt  at  a  generalization  which  shall 
embody  all  the  essential  elements  of  the  changing  actuality, 
is  a  later  product  of  reflection.  Just  as  virtues  precede 
virtue,  so  are  duties  prior  to  duty  ;  and  so  do  many  individual 
and  conflicting  commandments  antedate  the  idea  of  a  unity  of 
moral  law. 

To  understand  the  nature  of  the  conception  of  Duty  it  is 
necessary  to  discover  the  facts  in  moral  consciousness  in 
which  it  has  its  origin.  These  facts  all,  in  a  word,  refer  to 
the  excitement  of  the  feeling  of  obligation  in  connection  with 
certain  definite  relations  of  the  individual  man  to  other  men. 
Two  sets  of  factors  are  thus  brought  to  our  attention  by  this 
conception :  (1)  that  conduct  is  an  obligation ;  and  (2)  that 
the  obligation  has  personality  —  tlie  Moral  Self  in  relations 
to  other  moral  selves  —  for  its  objective  aim  or  point  of 
attachment.  In  this  way  the  significance  of  the  very  word 
"  duty  "  becomes  apparent ;  it  is  the  conduct  that  is  owing,  is 
due  (dehituiTi)^  because  the  mental  image  of  it  arouses  the 
feeling  of  "oughtness"  or  moral  obligation.  A  duty  is  a 
formulated  oughtness. 

I  cannot,  therefore,  quite  agree  with  the  statement  of  Pro- 
fessor Dewey :  ^  "  The  consciousness  of  an  end  to  be  realized, 
the  idea  of  something  to  be  done  is,  in  and  of  itself,  the 
consciousness  of  duty."     It  is  rather  to  be  said  that  the  con- 

1  Outlines  of  Ethics,  p.  192. 


DUTY  AND  MORAL  LAW  367 

sciousness  of  an  end  that  ought  to  be  realized,  an  idea  of 
something  that  ought  to  be  done,  is  in  and  of  itself  the  most 
fundamental  content  of  the  consciousness  of  duty.  But  no 
particular  conduct  can  be  regarded  as  a  duty  without  the 
added  conception,  or  mental  picture,  of  some  one  whose  duty 
the  conduct  is,  and  also  of  some  other  one  to  whom  the  con- 
duct is  due.  Who  owes  this  "  something  to  be  done  "  ?  It 
is  I  (or  some  other  one)  that  owe;  it  is  my  duty,  my  debt, 
my  obligation  to  be  met  by  a  corresponding  deed  of  will. 
To  what,  or  to  whom,  is  the  debt,  the  duty,  the  obligation 
due  ?  To  some  other  person,  to  another  who  stands  in  some 
definite  and  particular  form  of  relations  to  me. 

It  is  not  likely  to  be  disputed  that  the  conception  of  duty 
would  never  originate,  were  it  not  for  that  feeling  of  obliga- 
tion which  has  already  been  discussed  as  the  most  unique 
phenomenon  of  the  moral  consciousness  of  mankind.  For 
the  conception  is  essentially  an  abstraction  from  this  unique 
form  of  feeling.  And  when  it  becomes  the  more  definite 
conception  of  some  particular  form  of  conduct,  —  a  duty,  or 
the  duty,  for  example,  of  reverence  to  superiors,  pity  for  the 
suffering,  courage  in  danger,  or  justice  and  friendliness  to 
all  mankind,  —  it  cannot  be  disconnected  from  the  feeling 
which  is  its  source.  Only  forms  of  behavior  having  reference 
to  what  we  feel  either  ought  or  ought  not  to  be,  can  be  con- 
ceived of  as  duties. 

There  is  more  chance  for  question,  however,  with  reference 
to  the  statement  that  all  duties  are  due  to  some  Self  con- 
ceived of  as  standing  in  social  relations  to  other  selves.  For 
do  we  not  hear  of  duties  to  the  animals,  and  even  to  inanimate 
things ;  and  especially  in  these  later  days  of  somewhat  ex- 
treme refinement  of  ethical  theory,  of  duties  to  one's  own 
person,  and  above  all  to  a  code  conceived  of  as  a  sort  of  im- 
personal unity,  called  the  Moral  Law  ?  How,  then,  can  one 
affirm  —  as  I  certainly  wish  to  be  understood  to  affirm  —  that 
the  conception  of  duty  implies  as  an  integral  and  ineradicable 


368  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

moment  of  itself  the  reference  to  persons  existing  in  social 
relations  to  one  another  ? 

It  is,  indeed,  possible  to  maintain  the  duty  of  cultivating 
a  spirit  of  kindness  and  of  tlie  unwillingness  to  cause 
unnecessary  pain  toward  the  lower  animals.  The  rationale 
of  this  duty  may  be  differently  regarded  by  different  systems 
of  ethics,  or  when  brought  to  the  test  of  the  explanation 
afforded  by  the  ethical  judgments  of  different  individual 
agents.  Thus  A  may  refrain  from  abusing  another  man's 
dog,  because  he  recognizes  the  right  of  its  owner  to  protect 
his  property  from  injury ;  B  may  refrain  because  he  dislikes 
to  experience  the  sympathetic  pains  which  the  sufferings  of 
the  animal  would  cause  him ;  0  may  recoil  from  the  feeling  of 
moral  degradation  which  he  would  thus  bring  upon  himself ; 
and  D  may  shrink  from  the  social  opprobrium  involved,  or 
from  the  danger  of  arrest  by  the  officer  of  the  Society  for  the 
Prevention  of  Cruelty  to  Animals.  In  each  case,  however, 
if  reason  is  sought  to  justify  the  feeling  of  moral  obligation, 
the  reference  will  be  either  direct  or  indirect  to  that  which  is 
due  to  a  being  answering  to  the  conception  of  selfhood.  It  is 
my  duty  to  my  Self,  or  to  my  fellow  selves  among  the  social 
community,  or  to  the  quasi  self-like  being  of  the  dog,  which 
forms  the  point  of  attachment  for  the  feeling  of  obligation. 

In  this  connection  it  is  worth  while  to  notice  how  different 
is  the  attitude  of  moral  consciousness  toward  animals  which 
are  distinctly  hostile  and  dangerous  to  man,  when  it  is  possi- 
ble to  strip  them  as  nearly  as  possible  of  all  self-like  qualities. 
In  India,  for  example,  most  Europeans  do  not  feel  it  to  be  a 
duty  owed  to  the  cobras  or  the  man-eating  tigers,  to  treat 
them  with  kindness;  however  unwilling  many  individuals 
may  be  to  demean  themselves  by  subjecting  these  pests  to 
unnecessary  torture.  But  the  devout  and  superstitious  native 
will  continue  to  leave  the  deadly  serpent  where  the  Euro- 
pean may,  at  peril  to  his  own  salvation,  destroy  it;  while 
he  himself  feels  the  obligation  not  to  harm  the  animal  be- 


DUTY  AND  MORAL  LAW 

cause  his  own  ancestor  may  be  embodied  in  the  cobra  or 
because  he  would  thus  impair  his  own  chances  of  improving 
his  future  condition  in  Karma,  At  the  other  extreme  of 
refined  sentimentality  stands  the  example  of  St.  Francis  of 
Assisi  who  delighted  in  doing  his  duty  by  way  of  loving  our 
dear  brethren  in  the  Lord,  the  birds. 

Any  form  of  conduct,  then,  whose  mental  representation 
calls  forth  the  feeling  of  obligation  toward  some  Self  or 
self -like  being  is  properly  called  a  duty.  "  I  am  bound  to 
every  act  of  duty."  And  where  the  relations  which  define 
the  different  classes  and  different  circumstances  of  mankind 
are  sufficiently  permanent,  we  find  arising  out  of  them  some 
specific  formulas  that  prescribe  the  corresponding  duties. 
For  example,  the  relations  of  the  family  bear  upon  the  con- 
sciences of  the  different  members  of  the  family  in  different 
ways.  Husbands  and  wives  owe  each  other  some  duties; 
but  between  the  chief  of  the  tribe  and  the  tribesmen,  or 
between  the  common  members  of  the  same  tribe,  other  duties 
are  owing.  In  the  narratives  of  the  Homeric  era  we  have 
a  picture  of  a  variety  of  obligations  under  which  gods  and 
men  stand  to  one  another,  and  gods  and  goddesses  to  one 
another,  and  all  to  Zeus ;  while  the  different  classes  of  per- 
sons among  the  allied  Greek  forces  acknowledge  peculiar 
duties  as  belonging  to  each  one  of  them ;  nor  are  even  Greeks 
and  Trojans  so  alien  that  no  duties  whatever  are  felt  to  be 
incumbent  upon  both  in  their  reciprocal  relations.  In  our 
modern  commercial  civilization  it  is  the  duties  of  men  and 
women  that  grow  out  of  their  various  business  relations 
which  are  chiefly  emphasized;  and  even  domestic,  social, 
and  religious  duties  are  either  relegated  to  the  background 
of  privacy  or  else  are  themselves  discharged  as  matters  of 
contract  and  of  commercial  justice.  Indeed,  there  seems 
to  be  danger  that  in  England,  America,  and  Germany  all 
human  duties  will  be  regarded  from  the  commercial  point 
of  view,  —  while  in  the  Orient,  and  especially  perhaps  with 

24 


370  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

the  Hindu  and  the  Mohammedan,  duties  have  chiefly  to  do 
with  religion  and  social  relations ;  while  commerce  and  trade 
are  matters  that  are  conducted  with  an  appalling  lack  of  any 
consciousness  of  being  bound  by  moral  law. 

This  brief  analysis  of  the  conception  of  duty  may  enable 
us  to  discern  how  much  of  truth,  how  much  of  fallacy,  there 
is  in  a  theory  which  —  like  that  of  Paulsen,  for  example  — 
regards  duty  as  in  origin  essentially  negative,  and  uniformly 
arising  in  the  form  of  a  limitation  of  impulses.^  According 
to  this  theory  the  feeling  of  obligation  is  itself  a  derivative 
moral  consciousness,  caused  only  and  limited  by,  that  clash 
of  impulse  with  custom  which  always  gives  the  idea  of  the 
right  to  the  individual.  That  the  feeling  of  obligation  is 
not  a  derivative  form  of  moral  consciousness,  that,  on  the 
contrary,  one  cannot  even  speak  of  moral  consciousness  of 
morality  at  all  as  prior  to  this  feeling,  has  already  been 
shown  in  detail. ^  It  is  then  necessary  at  present  only  to 
point  out  the  fallacy  of  regarding  the  notion  of  duty  as 
purely  negative  and  limiting  of  natural  impulse.  It  is  true 
that  the  dawning  of  all  moral  experience  is  largely  due  to 
the  negation  and  limiting  of  natural  impulses ;  being  inhib- 
ited and  checked  by  the  social  environment  acts,  in  the 
early  instances,  to  stir  most  vehemently  the  consciousness 
of  right  and  wrong,  of  good  and  evil,  in  the  ethical  signifi- 
cance of  these  terms.  But  to  say  this  is  quite  a  different 
matter  from  characterizing  the  conception  of  duty  as  purely 
negative.  The  "duty-to,"  psychologically  considered,  is 
quite  as  positive,  and  it  often  becomes  quite  as  spontaneous, 
attractive,  and  influential,  as  the  "  duty-not-to. "  The 
reason  for  this  has  its  basis  in  the  moral  nature,  and  in  the 
most  nearly  primitive  moral  experiences.  For  even  under 
a  very  low  degree  of  ethical  and  social  culture,  but  pre- 
eminently as  this  degree  rises  to  the  condition  attained  in 

1  A  System  of  Ethics,  p.  346  f. 

2  Compare  the  discussions,  especially  chapters  V  and  VII. 


DUTY  AND  MORAL  LAW  3T1 

the  ethically  most  developed  communities,  the  feeling  of 
obligation  and  the  pleased  feeling  of  self-approval  together 
become  most  closely  associated  with  identical  forms  of 
conduct.  So  that,  in  all  degrees  of  social  culture,  ethically 
considered,  while  there  is  much  which  custom  enforces 
against  inclination  and  in  the  interests  of  duty,  there  is  also 
much  which  custom  does  to  secure  a  union  of  inclination 
with  the  feeling  of  obligation.  It  may  even  be  said  that  men 
are  naturally  inclined  to  do  at  least  some  things  which  they 
are  determined  by  custom,  law,  or  their  own  reflections,  to 
judge  that  they  ought  to  do.  Instances  of  this  sort,  taken 
from  the  less  developed  forms  of  social  organization,  are 
the  pleasurable  duties  of  courage  in  battle,  hospitality  to 
strangers,  and  many  of  those  forms  of  conduct  to  which  are 
attached  —  as  even  the  Tongan  chiefs  knew  (see  p.  315)  "  the 
agreeable  and  happy  feelings  which  a  man  experiences  within 
himself  when  he  conducts  himself  nobly  and  generously,  as 
a  man  ought  to  do. " 

The  conception  of  duty  must,  then,  be  held  to  include  all 
those  forms  of  behavior  toward  others  with  which  the  feeling 
of  obligation  becomes  bound  up,  whether  they  are  favored  or 
opposed  by  impulse  and  inclination.  One's  impulses  and 
inclinations,  whether  natural  or  acquired,  may  coincide 
with,   or  they  may  stand  in  the  way  of,  one's  duties. 

Erom  the  conception  of  duty  there  have  arisen  a  number  of 
subordinate  conceptions  and  connected  problems,  the  discus- 
sion of  which  has  quite  too  often  resulted  in  a  rather  unpro- 
ductive logomachy.  For  example:  Are  the  duties  and  the 
virtues  co-extensive  ?  Can  a  man,  by  being  virtuous,  do 
more  than  his  duty  ?  More  particularly :  Can  one  properly 
speak  of  such  experiences  as  the  duty  of  being  happy,  or  of 
thinking  correctly,  or  of  any  other  form  of  self-control  over 
feeling  and  intellect  ? 

So  far  as  such  questions  as  the  foregoing  are  of  general 
interest  and  have  a  bearing  upon  the  philosophy  of  conduct 


372  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

and  the  practice  of  the  virtuous  life,  they  are  illumined  in  a 
measure  by  such  considerations  as  the  following.  Both 
words  —  Duty  and  Virtue  —  are  used  sometimes  with  a 
chiefly  subjective,  and  sometimes  with  a  chiefly  objective 
and  external,  reference.  That  is  to  say,  they  either  signify 
conscious  and  voluntary  attitudes  of  the  Self,  considered 
mainly  as  such;  or  they  indicate  definite  forms  of  behavior 
which  are  observable  by  others  and  so  can  be  considered 
with  reference  to  their  conformity  to  the  prevalent  custom  or 
other  social  standard.  Not  only  in  all  discussion  about 
matters  of  conduct,  but  also  in  the  very  transactions  which 
constitute  these  matters  of  conduct,  the  consciousness  of 
men  is  subject  to  rapid  and  frequent  transitions  between 
these  two  points  of  view.  To  illustrate  this  let  us  consider 
two  examples  of  exactly  opposite  kinds;  and  let  the  first 
example  be  the  doing  of  a  duty  to  which  one  is  very  much 
disinclined,  —  the  administering  of  a  punishment,  the  dis- 
closure of  his  faults  to  a  friend,  the  bestowal  of  a  favor  likely 
to  be  abused,  the  performance  of  some  tiresome  social  func- 
tion, or  the  casting  of  a  vote  for  a  candidate  who  is  "the 
lesser  of  two  evils,"  etc.  Here  the  external  act  is  a  duty; 
and  its  performance  even  against  inclination  would  be  con- 
sidered by  most  men  to  be  a  virtuous  deed.  In  the  objective 
aspect  of  the  transaction  virtue  and  duty  coincide.  How 
stands  the  case,  however,  with  the  mental  attitude,  in  spite 
of  which,  one  forces  one's  self  —  so  to  say  —  to  perform  the 
external  act  ?  Is  one  virtuous  in  having  this  attitude  of  dis- 
inclination toward  one's  duty?  On  the  contrary,  would  not 
one  be  more  virtuous  if  one  were  less  in  need  of  using  the 
motive  of  duty  to  overcome  disinclination? 

If  the  same  point  of  view  is  steadfastly  maintained  during 
the  entire  inquiry,  I  am  confident  that  we  must  answer  Yes 
to  the  first  question  and  No  to  the  second  question;  and 
that  we  may  get  confirmation  from  both  the  questions  and 
their  appropriate   answers  for  identifying  throughout  the 


DUTY  AND  MOEAL  LAW  373 

sphere  of  the  virtues  and  the  sphere  of  the  duties.  For  sup- 
posing that  the  mental  attitude  to  the  external  act  may  be 
considered  as  a  piece  of  conduct,  —  and  so  it  ought  to  be 
considered  if  judgment  and  will  enter  into  the  feeling  here ; 
then  the  disinclination  itself  is  either  virtuous  or  not  vir- 
tuous, either  a  duty  or  not  a  duty.  In  many  cases  disin- 
clination to  do  one^s  duty  is  virtuous  and  is  itself  a  duty,  I 
ought  to  be  disinclined  to  administer  painful  punishment, 
to  find  fault  with  a  friend,  to  bestow  favors  likely  to  be 
abused,  to  use  strength  needed  for  work  in  social  functions, 
and  to  vote  for  unworthy  candidates,  no  matter  to  what  party 
they  belong.  In  a  word,  both  disinclination  to  the  duty  and 
doing  the  duty  to  which  we  are  disinclined,  may  be  both 
virtuous  and  dutiful.  Virtuous  living  consists  for  man  in 
large  measure  in  cultivating  certain  disinclinations  and  yet 
in  acting  in  ways  that  are  contrary  to  the  same  disinclina- 
tions. This  any  student  of  ethics  must  admit  who  takes 
ethical  facts  and  truths  as  they  exist  in  their  finest  manifes- 
tation, —  namely,  the  reactions  of  intelligent,  sensitive,  and 
disciplined  moral  consciousness  upon  the  inevitably  hard 
conditions,  both  physical  and  social,  of  human  life. 

In  the  other  class  of  cases  the  good  man  refrains,  for 
duty's  sake,  from  doing  what  he  is  more  or  less  strongly 
inclined  to  do.  Sometimes,  in  such  cases,  the  inclination 
may  be  virtuous  and  the  failure  to  perform  the  external  act 
may  seem  to  others  to  be  wrong;  at  other  times,  the  inclina- 
tion may  seem  to  others  to  be  wrong,  but  both  it  and  the 
refusal  to  do  the  thing  to  which  the  inclination  points  may 
really  be  both  dutiful  and  virtuous.  For  example,  he  who 
has  the  virtues  of  kindliness  and  pity  cannot  see  the  suffering 
and  sin  of  others  without  the  inclination  to  relieve  both. 
This  inclination  is  virtuous ;  it  is  a  duty  to  which  the  feeling 
of  obligation  binds  the  mind,  and  from  which  we  ought  not 
to  desire  to  free  ourselves.  So,  too,  there  are  certain  inclina- 
tions to  the  mutual  enjoyment  of  one  another's  wit,  poetic 


374  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

imagination,  scientific  information,  or  other  friendly  and 
sympathetic  intercourse,  without  which  the  life  of  virtue  and 
of  duty-doing  does  not  easily  flourish  or  even  keep  its  head 
above  the  mire  of  despondency  and  the  dust  of  oblivion. 
Yet  oftentimes  in  view  of  inevitable  limitations  and  of  the 
consequences  of  indulging  them,  these  kindly,  pitiful,  and 
friendly  inclinations  have  to  be  denied.  The  denial  is  both 
dutiful  and  virtuous ;  it  is  what  the  good  man  ought  to  do. 
But  it  is  also  both  dutiful  and  virtuous  to  do  what  one  can 
to  keep  alive  these  generous  and  kindly  impulses.  To  refrain 
from  giving  to  a  beggar  may  be  a  duty;  but  it  does  not 
follow  that  it  is  also  a  duty  not  to  feel  the  pitiful  inclination 
to  give. 

Similar  considerations  help  to  solve  those  cases  where 
the  moral  consciousness  of  mankind  seems  the  more  highly 
to  commend  the  virtue  of  those  who  have  done  "piore  than 
their  duty."  For  here,  too,  the  very  idea  of  a  surplusage 
which  is  transferable  from  the  credit  side  of  the  ledger 
where  the  accounts  of  "  Duty  "  are  kept  to  the  same  side  of 
the  page  over  which  is  the  headline  "Virtue,"  is  a  mistake 
due  to  a  lack  of  clear  thinking.  If  one  will  look  at  the  two 
accounts  without  changing  the  point  of  view,  one  will  find 
their  debits  and  credits  to  coincide;  and  both  accounts 
stand  always  with  the  same  deficits  on  the  credit  side.  No 
man  can  be  more  than  perfectly  virtuous;  no  man  can  do 
more  than  his  whole  duty.  It  would  not  be  virtuous  to 
exceed  in  any  direction  the  domain  of  known  duties ;  it  is 
not  doing  the  whole  duty  to  be  wanting  in  any  particular  of 
virtuous  conduct. 

Two  forms  of  the  confused  thinking  on  this  subject  which 
results  from  the  unconscious  transition  between  different 
points  of  view  need  especially  to  be  noticed  in  this  connec- 
tion. First:  The  evolution  of  morals  in  the  individual  and 
in  the  race  does  for  the  so-called  duties  of  mankind  what  it 
does  for  the  virtues ;  it  reduces  them  to  some  sort  of  order, 


DUTY  AND  MORAL  LAW  876 

formulates  them,  and  incorporates  them  into  certain  com- 
monly recognized  modes  of  external  behavior.  It  is  in  this 
way  that  there  come  to  exist  those  rules  of  conduct  which  it 
is  deemed  obligatory  for  all  persons  to  observe  toward  one 
another  under  definite  sets  of  relations ;  these  are  the  duties 
owed  by  one  person  to  another,  as  they  are  associated  in 
various  ways.  Morals  are  satisfied  if  these  debts  are  paid, 
whatever  be  the  inclination,  the  motive,  or  the  preceding 
struggle  in  consciousness.  But  morality  is  not  satisfied  in 
this  way;  and,  in  some  crude  and  imperfect  fashion,  man- 
kind demand  morality  as  well  as  morals  of  one  another. 
This  they  have  always  done ;  this,  to  an  increasing  extent, 
they  will  do  as  the  social  and  ethical  evolution  of  the  race 
goes  forward.  When,  however,  any  individual  makes  an 
exhibition  of  morality  in  some  form  that  notably  transcends 
the  limits  of  morals  fixed  by  the  social  standard  —  whether 
this  standard  be  custom,  law,  or  opinion  —  he  is  said  to  "  do 
more  than  it  was  his  duty  to  do."  But  here  again  is  con- 
cealed the  same  ambiguity  which  arises  from  shifting  the 
point  of  view.  This  ambiguity  may  be  emphasized  in  the 
form  of  a  paradox:  It  is  every  one's  duty  to  do  a  great  deal 
more  than  he  and  others  esteem  his  duty;  and  yet  no  one 
can  do  more  than  his  duty ;  and,  finally,  if  one  were  to  do 
more  than  his  duty,  he  would  not,  in  this  doing,  be  doing 
his  duty  at  all. 

Second:  It  is  customary  for  writers  on  ethics  to  debate 
whether  the  merit  of  well-doing  is  enhanced  or  diminished 
by  the  amount  of  conflict  through  which  the  mental  attitude 
finds  its  way  to  the  external  action.  Is  a  man's  virtue,  and 
his  corresponding  merit  the  greater  if  he  does  his  duty  in 
spite  of  inclination,  or  if  his  inclination  sets  strongly  in  the 
direction  of  his  duty?  Here,  once  again,  a  careful  analysis 
of  the  problem  exposes  the  vice  of  constantly  shifting  the 
point  of  view.  For  example,  the  question  is  raised :  Is  the 
man  who  is  strongly  tempted  to  indulge  the  appetite  for 


376  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

drink  and  yet  who,  out  of  proper  motives,  controls  that 
appetite,  more  virtuous,  dutiful,  and  meritorious  than  the 
man  who  is  not  tempted  to  drink  at  all  ?  The  answer  is, 
Yes,  or  No, —  according  to  the  point  of  view  which  is  taken, 
and  the  character  of  the  virtue  which  is  emphasized.  More 
virtue  of  will  goes  into  the  external  act  of  temperance  in  the 
case  of  the  man  who  has  the  appetite.  But  the  appetite  for 
drink  itself  is,  in  all  normal  cases,  a  resultant  of  an  habitual 
vice  of  will.  In  its  beginnings  and  early  developments,  this 
appetite  is  due  to  a  lack  of  rational  control  over  imagination, 
thought,  speech,  social  environment  and  influences.  On  the 
other  hand,  unless  the  case  has  passed  beyond  the  limits  of 
recovery  by  the  practice  of  self-control,  repeated  acts  of 
virtuous  self-denial  will  eventually  undermine  the  vicious 
appetite,  and  restore  the  man  to  a  completer  state  of  virtue. 
To  take  another  example :  Is  the  grasping  man  when,  with 
painful  reluctance  and  yet  for  duty's  sake,  he  bestows  his 
property  upon  some  good  cause,  more  virtuous  than  that 
"  cheerful  giver  "  who  is  the  beloved  of  God  and  man  ?  Yes, 
and  yet  No,  — according  to  one's  point  of  view,  may  be  the 
answer  again.  The  avaricious  man  practises  more  self- 
denial;  and  this  self-denial  is  certainly  virtuous,  if  it  be 
wise  and  in  a  good  cause.  But  the  kindly,  generous  feeling 
of  the  cheerful  giver  is  a  virtue  also, —  a  meritorious  attitude 
of  soul  toward  others  which  seems  to  belong  to  a  somewhat 
different  category.  Nor  is  it  much  easier  to  weigh  over 
against  one  another  virtues  and  duties  that  do  not  belong 
to  the  same  class,  than  it  is  to  estimate  the  relative  inten- 
sities of  the  different  forms  of  sensations,  or  of  the  pleasure- 
pains.  Especially  is  this  true  when  the  standard  itself  is 
constantly  kept  shifting  between  the  subjective  and  the 
objective  points  of  view. 

It  appears,  then,  that  the  conception  of  the  duties,  like 
the  conception  of  the  virtues,  arises  from  the  way  in  which 
men  contemplate  the  different  aspects  of  moral  life   and 


DUTY  AND  MORAL  LAW  877 

moral  development.  The  two  conceptions  lay  emphasis 
upon  somewhat  different  aspects  of  this  life  and  of  its  devel- 
opment. The  virtues  suggest  less  of  the  feeling  of  obliga- 
tion, more  of  that  which  is  relatively  spontaneous  and 
impulsive.  The  duties  lay  more  emphasis  upon  the  feeling 
of  obligation,  in  its  frequent  attitude  of  counteracting  or 
restricting  the  impulses;  but  especially  do  they  recognize 
the  various  social  relations  in  which  men  are  placed  toward 
one  another  as  limiting  and  defining  the  forms  of  their  mutual 
obligations. 

Thus  the  conception  of  duties  leads  naturally  and  neces- 
sarily to  the  conception  of  rights.  What  I  am  owing  to 
another,  that  it  is  his  right  to  have :  what  is  due  me  from 
another,  to  that  I  am  entitled  as  to  a  right.  And  as  the 
conceptions  of  duty  and  of  virtue  take  a  wider  range  and 
extend  to  more  manifold  and  intricate  relations  among  men, 
the  idea  of  universal  moral  laws  comes  into  prominence  and 
power.  This  growth  in  these  conceptions  introduces  and 
necessitates  a  philosophy  of  conduct  that  is  political  and 
social  rather  than  so  exclusively  psychological. 

It  is  quite  impossible,  however,  to  do  the  scantiest  justice 
to  the  conception  of  Duty  without  noticing  how  forceful  is 
the  grasp  which  it  lays  upon  the  ethical  imagination,  when 
it  is  sublimated  and  apostrophized  to  the  highest  possible 
degree.  Nor  is  the  quickening  and  elevating  influence  of  the 
conception  lessened  by  the  extremely  vague  and  indefinite 
nature  of  its  content.  On  the  contrary,  the  continually 
expanding  demand  made  upon  human  thought  and  imagina- 
tion to  frame  an  Ideal  of  that  which  shall  express  all  which 
the  Moral  Self  feels  itself  obligated  to  be,  and  to  do,  becomes 
the  cause  of  more  and  more  strenuous  efforts  to  realize  all 
the  concrete  virtues  and  duties  which  make  up  the  Virtuous 
Life.  Thus  Kant,  although  he  seemed  to  make  the  concep- 
tion of  duty  synonymous  with  subjection  to  an  abstract  prin- 
ciple admitted  that  men  properly  ascribe  a  certain  "  dignity 


378  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

and  sublimity  to  the  person  who  fulfils  all  his  duties. "  ^  In 
his  celebrated  apostrophe  he  addresses  the  bare  conception 
as  "Duty!  Thou  sublime  and  mighty  name."  In  Coleridge 
and  Carlyle  and  in  other  writers  whose  thoughts  upon  ethical 
topics  are  infused  with  more  of  emotional  warmth,  a  similar 
treatment  is  given  to  this  impersonal  conception.  In  not  a 
few  of  those  lives  which  are  actually  keyed  to  the  highest 
pitch  of  moral  endeavor,  the  idea  to  which  this  "sublime 
and  mighty  name  "  corresponds,  imparts  to  the  person  who 
follows  the  idea  a  certain  great  "  dignity  and  sublimity  "  of 
personal  character. 

How  shall  this  manner  of  speech  be  taken  out  of  the  realm 
of  poetry  and  myth  and  given  the  garb  of  scientific  truth  ? 
It  seems  to  me  that  only  one  way  is  possible.  The  ideal  of 
duty-doing,  which  is  a  mere  abstraction  until  it  is  translated 
into  terms  of  personal  experience  and  personal  character,  is 
really  the  ideal  of  a  Moral  Self  perfectly  adjusted,  by  his  own 
response  to  the  feeling  of  obligation,  to  all  other  moral  selves 
in  the  various  social  relations.  What,  then,  is  the  whole 
duty  of  man  ?  It  is  the  constant,  courageous,  wise,  and 
loving  devotion  of  one's  powers  to  the  realization  of  this 
Ideal.  Positively  expressed  in  terms  of  religion,  the  ex- 
hortation which  sets  before  man  his  whole  duty  is  this: 
"Be  ye  therefore  perfect  even  as  your  Father  which  is  in 
heaven  is  perfect."  Negatively  expressed,  and  as  contra- 
dicting all  the  impulses,  endeavors,  and  ideals  which  lie 
in  different  directions,  human  ethical  experience  may  be 
summed  up  in  these  closing  words  of  Tourgu^neff 's  Faust : 
"Not  the  fulfilment  of  cherished  dreams  and  aspirations, 
however  lofty  they  may  be  —  the  fulfilment  of  duty,  that  is 
what  must  be  the  care  of  man.  Without  laying  on  himself 
chains,  the  iron  chains  of  duty,  he  cannot  reach  without  a 
fall  the  end  of  his  career.    But  in  youth  we  think  —  the  freer 

1  Fundamental  Principles  of  the  Metaphysic  of  Morals,  Edition  of  Rosenkranz 
and  Schubert,  p.  64. 


DUTY  AND  MOEAL  LAW  379 

the  better,  the  farther  one  will  get.  Youth  may  be  excused 
for  thinking  so.  But  it  is  shameful  to  delude  one's  self 
when  the  stern  face  of  truth  has  looked  one  in  the  eyes  at 
last." 

Closely  connected  with  the  conception  of  duty  as  an  obli- 
gation upon  impulse  which  is  felt  like  "  iron  chains  "  is  the 
conception  of  moral  law  in  its  origin  and  development.  On 
this  subject  the  analysis  of  moral  consciousness  confirms 
what  an  historical  study  of  moral  development  suggests ;  only 
at  a  certain  stage  in  his  progress  does  man  (the  individual 
and  —  in  a  somewhat  figurative  way  we  may  say  —  the  race) 
find  himself  face  to  face  with  this  legal  conception  of  mor- 
ality. It  is  indeed  doubtful  whether  any  distinct  epoch  in 
ethical  evolution  is  to  be  discerned  "  when  the  idea  of  obliga- 
tion held  in  the  general  consciousness  has  been  taken  by  the 
obligatory  norm  of  law. "  The  rise  and  growth  of  the  thought 
that  the  pursuit  of  the  Virtuous  Life  may  properly  be  con- 
ceived of  as  obedience  to  a  universal  code  has  been  natural 
and  yet  manifold  in  character,  and  oftentimes  subtle  and 
concealed.  Especially  is  this  true  of  that  exceedingly  vague 
and  intangible  conception  which  undertakes  to  express  it- 
self in  such  phrases  as  a  moral  law,  or  the  Moral  Law.  Laws, 
themselves  impersonal,  which  are  concrete  enactments  regu- 
lating the  relations  of  persons,  and  which  owe  their  origin  to 
the  action  of  persons,  can  be  understood.  Laws  that  have 
only  the  significance  of  the  more  or  less  regular  observed 
modes  of  the  behavior  of  impersonal  things,  are  prima  facie 
intelligible,  even  if  we  cannot  understand  their  source.  But 
what  can  be  meant  by  the  Moral  Law,  if  all  personality,  all 
Selfhood,  is  to  be  left  out  of  the  account  which  ethics  attempts 
to  render  of  its  origin,  its  validity,  and  the  enforcement  of 
its  penalties  ? 

In  their  effort  to  understand  the  origin  and  nature  of  such 
a  mental  construct  as  the  conception  of  an  impersonal  moral 
law  writers  on  ethics  are  found  shifting  their  points  of  view 


380  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

in  the  fashion  against  which  warning  has  already  been 
uttered  repeatedly.  That  is  to  say,  these  writers  take  at 
one  moment  the  subjective,  or  plainly  personal  point  of 
view ;  and  at  the  next  moment  they  are  found  stationed  at 
the  more  objective  and  tentatively  impersonal  point  of  view. 
I  say  "tentatively  impersonal;"  for  no  point  of  view  from 
which  to  regard  any  ethical  conception  can  possibly  be  more 
than  apparently  and  momentarily  ("  for  the  sake  of  the  argu- 
ment," as  it  were)  separated  from  considerations  that  are 
realizable  only  in  the  conditions  and  social  relations  of 
moral  and  personal  beings. 

Subjectively  regarded,  the  conception  of  Moral  Law  is  the 
conscious  apprehension  of  some  rule  or  maxim,  adapted  to 
regulate  conduct,  which  actually  excites  the  feelings  of 
obligation,  approbation,  and  merit,  and  which  actually  offers 
a  mandate  to  the  will.  Subjectively  considered  also,  the  very 
formation  of  this  conception  implies  a  work  of  learning  these 
rules  and  maxims  from  other  persons,  or  of  generalizing  them 
for  one's  self  by  processes  of  observation.  The  primary  data 
for  its  formation  are  such  as  have  already  been  discovered  by 
our  analysis  of  man's  moral  consciousness.  They  are  the  "I 
think,"  "I  feel,"  "I  desire,"  "I  plan,"  etc.,  all  of  them 
psychoses,  which  have  reference  to  forms  of  good  and  bad 
conduct.  Objectively  regarded,  however,  the  so-called  moral 
laws  are  certain  forms  of  conduct  that  have  —  by  whatever 
historical  processes  and  in  accordance  with  whatever  true  or 
false  traditions  —  become  actually  embodied  in  customs, 
maxims,  statutes,  or  other  institutions;  they  are  the  com- 
monly accepted  formulas  which  assume  the  right  to  regulate 
human  behavior  under  a  great  variety  of  conditions  and 
relations.  But  such  laws,  thus  objectively  and  impersonally 
regarded,  cannot  be  regarded  as  moral  laws,  without  a  return 
to  the  personal  and  subjective  point  of  view.  And  here  the 
simple  and  ultimate  fact  is  that  they  appear  before  the 
individual  consciousness  as  binding ;  they  actually  arouse  the 


DUTY  AND  MORAL  LAW  B81 

feeling  of  obligation,  and  offer  a  mandate,  an  imperative  to 
the  will.  Their  being  consists  in  the  recognition  which 
they  obtain  in  the  minds  of  personal  beings. 

Moral  laws  imply,  then,  law -giving  moral  consciousness, 
ivhich  is  their  only  actual,  and  indeed  only  conceivable,  source. 
So  much  of  universality  as  they  can  attain  is  dependent  upon 
those  characteristics  of  moral  consciousness  which  belong 
to  human  nature  and  are  exercised  semper,  ubique,  et  ah 
omnibus.  So  much  of  objectivity  as  they  possess,  of  imper- 
sonality as  they  appear  to  have,  is  due  to  the  conditions  and 
nature  of  the  various  forms  of  social  organization.  But 
social  organization  is  itself  a  product  of  morally  constituted 
selves.  In  all  such  social  organization  the  primary,  uni- 
versally present  fact  is  found  to  be  that  certain  ways  of 
behavior,  rather  than  others,  are  recognized  as  binding  upon 
human  nature.  As  far  back  as  one  can  go  in  human  history, 
trusting  in  genuine  historical  sources,  one  finds  society  of 
some  sort  already  organized  upon  substantially  the  same 
ethical  basis  as  that  now  existing.  The  person  makes  the 
laws  that  take  on  the  objective  form  of  custom,  maxim, 
common  law,  or  written  statute ;  and  the  person  responds  to 
these  objective  forms  with  the  feelings,  thoughts,  and  voli- 
tions, which  make  them  to  be,  in  reality,  moral  laws. 

The  prevalent  conception  of  moral  law,  and  the  influence 
of  this  conception  over  the  practical  morals  and  virtuous 
living  of  the  men  of  any  age,  are,  therefore,  always  closely 
connected  with  the  development  of  the  conception  of  law  in 
general.  In  modern  times  this  connection  has  been  made 
especially  close  with  thoughts  and  feelings  which  are  the 
product  and  the  embodiment  of  the  regnant  scientific  spirit; 
and  the  fact  has  been,  in  some  respects,  most  unfortunate 
for  ethics.  What,  in  reality,  is  to  be  understood  by  the 
word  "Law,"  as  this  one  word  is  made  to  cover  experiences 
so  unlike  as  the  generalizations  of  the  physical  sciences, 
the  enactments  of  legislative  assemblies,  and  the  formulas 


382  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

to  which  the  nobler  impulses   to   action   respond  in  moral 
consciousness  ? 

As  I  have  elsewhere  shown, ^  the  ethical  nature  of  man 
directs,  colors,  and  everywhere  interpenetrates  his  scientific 
researches  and  conclusions.  It  is  in  his  moral  being  that  all 
the  current  notions  of  the  sanctions,  of  the  quasi-ethicol 
import  and  obligatory  character  of  natural  laws,  have  their 
origin  and  source  of  strength.  From  the  same  fountain  flow 
the  feelings  with  which  the  modern  student  of  nature  so 
highly  regards  his  oftentimes  really  unimportant  discoveries, 
and  with  which  he  magnifies  his  office  and  the  worth  to  the 
race  of  his  own  personal  services  as  a  so-called  man  of 
discovery  and  research.  Only  for  a  being  with  moral  con- 
sciousness can  such  conceptions  as  "the  reign  of  law,*' 
"obedience  to  the  laws  of  nature,"  etc.,  have  any  power  to 
awaken  ideas  of  obligation  or  sanctity.  Indeed,  if  one 
will  think  clearly,  one  will  come  to  see  that  all  that  termi- 
nology of  science  which  implies  ideas  of  sanction,  obligation, 
worth,  etc.,  is  utterly  meaningless  except  as  applied  to  the 
states  and  relations  of  personal  beings.  On  the  other  hand, 
any  attempt  to  set  up  the  conception  of  an  impersonal  rule, 
or  a  formula  derived  from  observation  and  generalizations 
on  a  basis  of  mere  fact,  within  the  moral  realm  results  in  a 
species  of  fetish-worship  which  is  as  unthinking  and  degrad- 
ing here  as  fetish-worship  is  within  the  kindred  realm 
of  religion.  The  same  personal  being  who  is  expected  to 
regard  with  a  feeling  of  sacredness  and  admiring  approbation 
the  uniform  modes  of  the  behavior  of  impersonal  beings 
—  the  so-called  "  laws  of  nature  "  —  cannot  be  expected, 
without  these  feelings  of  a  personal  sort,  to  conform  in  his 
own  conduct  to  the  idea  of  an  impersonal  rule,  when  it  calls 
itself  by  the  name  of  a  "moral  law."  Why,  indeed,  should 
man  show  the  fundamental  characteristics  of  his  moral 
selfhood  more  plainly  when  he  is  regarding  the  behavior  of 

1  In  Philosophy  of  Knowledge,  and  A  Theory  of  Reality  —  throughout  both 
books. 


DUTY  AND  MOEAL  LAW  383 

things  than  when  he  is  regarding  the  behavior  of  human 
beings  ? 

Of  all  the  several  forms  which  the  conception  of  law  can 
assume,  that  which  it  wears  within  the  sphere  of  ethics  is 
most  distinctly  an  affair  of  personality.  Natural  laws  are, 
indeed,  only  the  observed  or  inferred  uniform  ways  of  the 
behavior  of  things ;  the  things  themselves  are  not  regarded 
as  consciously  conforming  to  the  laws.  The  whole  represen- 
tation terminates  in  the  mere  fact  that  so  the  things  behave. 
But  human  laws  are  objectively  formulated  rules,  to  which 
conformity  is  expected  and  enforced  by  an  appeal  to  interest 
of  some  sort.  Both  natural  laws  and  human  laws  become 
moral,  and  obedience  to  them  becomes  virtuous  and  disobe- 
dience becomes  a  vice,  only  when  the  external  expression  of 
the  formula  presents  itself  within  the  consciousness  of  some 
Self  as  a  form  of  behavior  which  ought  to  be  rendered,  under 
certain  social  relations,  to  other  selves.  Thus  the  idea  of 
an  "external  imponent," — to  borrow  the  expressive  phrase 
of  Professor  T.  H.  Green  ^  —  is  undoubtedly  connected  in 
the  imagination  of  mankind  with  the  sanctions  belonging  to 
most  laws  that  are  conceived  of  as  distinctively  moral. 

When  the  point  of  view  properly  held  by  the  student  of 
ethical  evolution  is  assumed,  it  is  seen  how  the  idea  of 
universal  obligation  arises  from  the  experience  which  the 
individual  actually  has  of  the  laws  imposed  upon  him  in 
connection  with  the  growth  of  society.  Formulas  of  conduct 
that  are  embodied  in  customs,  common  laws,  statutes,  and 
institutions,  do  really  and  inevitably  bind  men  as  with 
"iron  chains."  But  on  the  other  hand,  the  laws  thus 
actualized  in  the  social  organization,  and  accorded  sanc- 
tions by  society,  have  themselves  arisen  from  the  more 
primitive  ethico-religious  consciousness  of  mankind.  The 
profound  import  of  all  this  can  only  appear  later  on,  when 
we  come  to  deal  with  the  relation  to  ultimate  realities  which 
1  See  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  p.  354. 


884  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

is  sustained  by  this  ethico-religious  consciousness  in  whose 
development  lies  the  source  of  the  very  laws  which  it  regards 
as  having  an  "external  imponent,"  and  to  which  it  accords 
the  right  to  command  and  a  certain  character  for  sanctity. 
It  is  enough  now  to  note  that  the  conception  of  some  one 
all-comprehending  Law  which,  having  an  impersonal  origin, 
comes  to  claim  the  right,  as  mere  law,  to  bind  the  conduct 
of  the  individual,  or  of  society,  is  a  conception  which  can 
find  no  legitimate  place  either  in  the  philosophy  of  conduct 
or  in  ethical  praxis.  Of  all  ethical  abstractions  this  is  the 
most  untenable. 

Among  the  influences  which  have  worked  upon  the  thought 
and  imagination  of  man  to  develop,  elevate,  and  enforce 
the  conception  of  moral  law,  that  of  religion  has  been  much 
the  most  potent.  Indeed  the  very  nature  of  religion  is  such 
as  to  serve  most  effectively  the  two  principal  ends  reached  by 
this  conception ;  —  namely,  (1)  that  the  feeling  of  obligation 
should  attach  itself  to  an  "external  imponent"  instead  of 
remaining  a  merely  inexplicable  subjective  stirring  of  con- 
sciousness ;  and  (2)  that  the  formula  should  assume  the  shape 
of  a  command  issued  from  a  person  to  a  person  and  defining 
right  personal  relations.  All  the  seeming  impersonal  laws, 
whatever  may  be  the  form  of  manifestation  which  they  have 
taken,  lack  something  of  these  important  characteristics. 
But  the  priest,  the  prophet,  the  soothsayer,  or  the  sacred 
writing,  comes  with  words  from  those  who  are  like  the 
noblest  and  most  powerful  of  human  kind,  with  definite 
formulas,  in  the  shape  of  a  command  — "  Thou  shalt "  or 
"  Thou  shalt  not ; "  and  this  command  is  enforced  by  prom- 
ises of  reward  and  threats  of  penalties.  In  the  lower  stages 
of  ethical  and  religious  evolution  this  is  especially  true  of 
the  essence  of  tabu,  which  is,  as  Jevons  has  said,^  the  con- 
viction that  certain  things  must  be  avoided,  because  it  has 
been   so   commanded  —  absolutely,    and   not  on   grounds   of 

1  Introduction  to  the  History  of  Religion,  p.  llf. 


DUTY  AND  MOKAL  LAW  385 

experience  with  them  or  of  "  unconscious  utility. ""  Tabu  is 
the  objective  categorical  imperative,  the  law  that  is  imposed 
from  without  as  a  "  Thou  shalt  not "  — "  the  first  form 
assumed  by  social  and  moral  obligation  and  by  religious 
commandments."  In  the  same  direction  of  ethical  evolu- 
tion those  religious  codes  have  been  powerful  which,  like  the 
laws  of  Moses,  or  the  laws  of  Manu,  have  prescribed  forms 
of  ritual,  or  other  forms  of  conduct,  to  mankind.  Their  gen- 
eral formula  is  a  "Thus  saith  the  Lord,"  —  a  commandment 
that  has  divine  sanctions,  is  more  direct  and  usually  more 
explicit  than  the  impersonal  custom,  and  that  appeals  to  all 
those  feelings  which  are  the  more  powerful  because  the  objects 
toward  which  they  are  evoked  are  invisible  and  mysterious. 

It  is  significant  of  the  most  important  ethical  truths  that 
no  release  from  the  "  iron  chains  "  which  give  these  truths 
the  character  of  laws  follows  upon  the  setting  free  of  the 
intellect  from  its  superstitions,  so  long  as  the  command- 
ment itself  retains  its  moral  character.  The  inner  obliga- 
tion—  the  feeling-bound  to  keep  the  commandment  as  though 
it  were  an  "  external  imponent "  —  still  abides  in  the  morally 
worthy  consciousness;  still  does  this  voice  of  conscience 
seem  as  though  it  were  a  voice  from  an  invisible  and  supreme 
source  of  moral  laws,  a  true  Voice  of  God.  Hence  when 
those  who  do  not  believe  in  God  as  a  Moral  Self,  or  in  God 
at  all,  personify  the  conception  of  the  sum-total  of  ethical 
obligations,  they  are  fain  to  spell  the  words  with  capitals 
and  swear  allegiance  to  this  purely  abstract  conception. 
They  hypostasize  and  deify  an  abstraction  as  though  it  were 
itself  existent  and  divine. 

"  Der  AherglauV,  in  dem  vnr  aufgewachserij 
Verliert,  auch  wenn  wir  ihn  erkennen,  darum 
Dock  seine  Macht  nicTit  ilber  uns.    Es  sind 
Nicht  allefreiy  die  ihrer  Ketten  spotten."  ^ 

1  Lessing,  Nathan  der  Weise,  line  2755  f .  "  The  snperstition  in  which  we  have 
grown  np,  even  when  we  come  to  recognize  it,  does  not  lose  its  power  over  us  on 
this  account    They  are  not  all  free  who  scorn  their  chains." 

25 


386  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

I  shall  undertake  to  show  in  another  connection  that  this 
high  regard  for  the  conception  of  an  impersonal  formula,  or 
system  of  formulas,  —  that  is,  for  the  Moral  Law  regarded  as 
not  having  its  ground  or  sanctions  in  the  Absolute  Moral 
Self  —  is  a  continuance  of  a  similar  more  refined,  but  no 
more  logical,  form  of  superstition. 

It  appears  then  that  our  conception  of  the  law  of  morality  is 
itself  an  evolution  which  is  due  to  the  action  and  reaction 
of  two  correlated  but  not  identical  sides,  or  aspects,  of  man's 
ethico-social  development.  Of  these  one  is  objective  and 
historical ;  it  includes  the  progressive  formation  of  all  those 
legal  or  quasi  legal  institutions,  of  whatever  kind,  which  pre- 
sent themselves  as  external  to  the  moral  consciousness  of  the 
individual,  because  they  prescribe  formulas  for  his  conduct 
that  have  rewards  and  penalties  attached,  and  represent  with 
social  sanctions  the  collective  will  and  judgment  of  the 
social  organization.  These  are  the  laws  furnished  by  the 
current  morals  regarded  as  externally  imposed.  But  this 
historical  evolution  is  accompanied  by  a  development  of  the 
ethico-social  consciousness  within  the  individual  members 
of  the  social  organization.  Such  consciousness  consists  in 
a  clearer  mental  grasp  upon  the  significance  and  value  of  the 
external  institutions,  and  a  response  to  them  with  the  dis- 
tinctively ethical  feelings  of  obligation  and  of  approbation 
(or  its  opposite).  It  is  this  subjective  evolution  which, 
having  more  or  less  unconsciously  produced  the  objective,  — 
now  determines  the  question  whether  the  existing  laws  shall 
be  acknowledged  to  be  truly  moral  laws.  Thus  humanity 
comes  to  a  higher  degree  of  moral  consciousness  with  refer- 
ence to  its  own  morals.  Thus  there  is  developed  an  idea 
of  laws  that,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  present  enlight- 
enment, correspond  better  with  the  Moral  Ideal  than  do  the 
existing  legal  institutions  and  externalized  moral  formulas. 
Indeed,  in  the  interests  of  this  ideal  every  ethically  progres- 
sive social  organization  is  continually  condemning  and  so 


DUTY  AND  MORAL  LAW  387 

improving  or  wholly  rejecting  its  own  past  attempts  to  legal- 
ize the  different  forms  of  the  Virtuous  Life.  What  it  has 
imposed  upon  itself  in  an  external  way  it  now  regards  as 
an  unwarrantable  imposition ;  and  so  it  changes  the  external 
manifestation  of  some  phase  of  its  own  ethical  construction. 

In  adopting  this  conclusion,  however,  the  philosophy  of 
conduct  is  by  no  means  left  to  those  shiftings  of  opinion  and 
of  conviction  which  seem  to  threaten  its  very  foundations. 
Laws  many  there  have  been,  as  there  have  been  gods  many 
and  lords  many.  And  the  moral  laws,  sacred  as  we  must 
regard  them,  seem  to  be  much  less  stable  than  are  the  laws 
of  nature  so-called.  Well,  why  should  they  not  be  —  at  least 
in  some  sort,  and  when  regarded  from  a  higher  point  of 
view  ?  Even  physical  reality  is  not  a  matter  merely  of 
keeping  a  few  unalterably  fixed  laws  externally  imposed. 
It,  too,  when  regarded  as  having  value,  appears  to  be  the 
manifestation  of  the  unfolding  Life  of  the  World;  and 
natural  science,  as  well  as  ethics,  needs  to  recognize  the 
higher  import  of  the  very  system  of  laws  which  it  has  already 
discovered.  What  has  already  been  seen  to  be  true  in  a  lim- 
ited way,  when  shown  to  be  true  also  in  the  larger  spheres  of 
conduct,  suggests  to  the  student  of  ethics  a  higher  and  more 
unchanging  point  of  view.  It  is  chiefly  religion  that  has 
connected  all  these  predicates  —  such  as  personal  source, 
supreme  authority,  inviolable  sanctions,  meaning  that  lies 
in  the  very  heart  of  Reality  —  with  the  conception  of  an 
inviolable  and  unalterable  ethical  code.  Whether  we  shall 
not  be  forced  either  to  leave  all  our  philosophy  of  human 
conduct  in  a  state  of  perpetual  flux,  or  else  to  substitute 
the  conception  of  a  personal  Life  for  the  abstract  conception 
of  an  impersonal  Law  remains  to  be  considered. 

At  any  rate  it  is  absolutely  certain  that  philosophy  cannot 
logically  justify,  as  anthropology  cannot  historically  authen- 
ticate, the  conception  of  a  Code  for  Conduct,  that,  irrespec- 
tive of  the  moral  character  of  its  personal  source  and  of  the 


388  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

moral  consequences  which  its  keeping  or  breaking  has  upon  a 
society  of  personal  beings,  possesses  the  right  to  rule  over  men. 
Especially  in  respect  of  its  moral  consciousness,  society  is 
always  superior  to  the  laws  to  which  it  has  given  the  place 
of  "external  imponents."  For  moral  consciousness,  curi- 
ously enough,  always  allows  itself  glimpses  of  a  character 
for  the  individual,  and  of  a  condition  for  society,  which  is 
better  than  that  already  existing,  and  to  which  man  is  bound 
—  somehow,  but  why  ?  or  by  whom  ?  —  to  struggle  forward 
and  upward.  To  try  to  justify  this  obligation  by  deify- 
ing Humanity  and  joining  the  few  remaining  disciples  of 
Auguste  Comte,  would  only  be  another  way  of  conforming 
to  the  clinging  superstition  (?)  which  regards  the  Moral 
Ideal  as  having  essentially  the  character  of  an  "external 
imponent." 

We  may  note,  in  closing  this  chapter,  how  the  conceptions 
of  Virtue,  Duty,  and  Moral  Law,  stand  related  in  moral 
consciousness,  in  many  interesting  ways.  Virtue  is  a  gen- 
eralization from  particular  virtues,  or  kinds  of  conduct  to 
which,  as  due  chiefly  to  moral  reactions  of  the  social  en- 
vironment, the  feelings  of  obligation,  approbation,  and  merit 
have  become  attached.  Duty  is  a  generalization  from  con- 
crete particular  duties,  each  one  of  which  implies  the  same 
feelings  as  connected  with  forms  of  conduct  dependent  upon 
our  special  relations  with  others  (an  "oweness"  of  some- 
thing to  be  done  to  some  person).  Law  is  a  generalization 
of  the  maturer  consciousness  of  the  individual  in  his  race 
development  and  more  extended  social  environment.  It  is 
two-sided,  and  implies  validity  ("thatness")  and  content 
("  whatness  ") ;  —  an  imperative  which  has  reference  to  some 
external  authority,  although  existing  as  a  mandate  within 
the  human  mind. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

UNIVERSALITY  OF  MORAL  PRINCIPLES 

Corresponding  in  some  sort  to  the  unification  of  virtues 
and  duties,  and  to  the  development  of  the  conception  of 
moral  law,  is  the  growth  in  universality  of  moral  principles. 
Before  we  can  comprehend  the  nature  of  this  growth,  how- 
ever, it  is  necessary  briefly  to  consider  for  what  the  word 
"  principles  "  is  entitled  to  stand  in  any  system  of  ethics,  as 
well  as  in  the  actual  pursuit  of  the  Virtuous  Life.  Of  the 
conceptions  whose  import  has  already  been  examined,  that 
of  moral  law  comes  nearest  to  the  content  represented  by  the 
word  now  to  be  examined.  For  the  essence  of  rules  and 
formulas  in  morals  does  not  consist  in  an  unconscious  and 
involuntary  uniformity  of  action,  but  in  the  relation  in 
which  the  rules  or  formulas  stand  to  the  judgment,  feel- 
ing, and  will  of  moral  selves.  Moral  principles,  too,  have 
reference  to  conduct,  and  conduct  is  something  more  than 
mere  habit  of  action. 

In  ethics,  then,  laws  when  subjectively  regarded  become 
inmost  respects  the  equivalent  of  principles;  for  both  are 
the  self-understood  and  self-accepted  formulas  for  regulating 
the  behavior  of  persons  in  their  relations  to  other  persons. 
There  are,  nevertheless,  two  respects  in  which  the  concep- 
tion of  moral  principles  carries  us  beyond  the  conception 
of  moral  law.  First :  the  word  "  principle  "  lays  more  em- 
phasis upon  the  recognition  by  the  reason  of  the  rule,  or 
formula,  and  less  upon  those  factors  in  moral  consciousness 
which  make  it  possible  to  regard  ethical  rules  and  formulas 


390  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

as  originating  in  some  impersonal  source,  and  so  as  having 
a  large  irrational  element  in  their  character  of  "external 
imponents."  Thus  the  will  seems  to  bow  to  laws;  the 
reason  acts  upon,  or  in  the  light  of,  principles.  Reason  is 
more  in  conscious  agreement  with  the  principles  of  right 
conduct  than  with  the  laws  that  define  the  limits  of  such 
conduct.  Laws  cannot  become  principles  in  the  sphere  of 
ethics  without  making  an  appeal  to  the  rational  side  of 
human  nature.  Laws,  —  only  when  rationally  apprehended, 
become  principles. 

With  this  characteristic  difference  between  the  two  con- 
ceptions another  is  closely  and  even  necessarily  allied. 
Principles,  in  order  to  be  entitled  to  the  name,  must  be 
capable  of  becoming  the  points  of  starting  from  which  by 
processes  of  reasoning  to  conclude  something  concerning 
particulars.  Moral  principles  are,  then,  in  the  second  place, 
such  rules,  or  formulas,  as  being  apprehended  by  the  reason 
may  be  made  the  grounds  of  a  syllogism,  or  argument,  by 
means  of  which  to  reach  a  particular  judgment  concerning 
the  right  or  wrong  of  conduct.  They  are  starting-points  for 
ethical  judgment. 

This  view  is  justified  by  the  current  usages  of  speech.  It 
is  customary  in  some  circles  to  speak  of  certain  persons  as 
'*  men  of  good  "  (or,  again,  of  bad)  "  principles ;  "  and  by  the 
adjective  used  in  this  connection  with  the  word  principle  the 
usage  indicates  clearly  enough  that  it  is  an  ethical  meaning 
which  is  had  in  mind.  Mr.  A  may  be  trusted  in  general, 
and  expected  to  do  right  in  each  particular  emergency  call- 
ing for  action,  because  he  is  a  man  of  good  moral  principles. 
But  of  Mr.  B  one  is  obliged  not  to  expect  too  much  by  way 
of  resisting  temptation  or  acting  with  good  judgment;  be- 
cause Mr.  B  is  not  well  grounded  in  moral  principles.  In 
all  such  cases  the  emphasis  is  plainly  not  put  upon  mere 
difference  in  that  habit,  or  fixed  state,  of  the  affections  and 
will  which,  in  the  Aristotelian  meaning  of  the  words,   is 


UNIVERSALITY  OF  MORAL  PRINCIPLES  391 

called  a  virtue  or  a  vice.  In  the  man  of  moral  principles, 
good  or  bad,  reason  recognizes  its  own  grounds  of  action, 
and  stands  ready  to  make  them  the  points  of  starting  for  a 
conclusion  that  is  —  at  least  in  the  opinion  of  the  individual 
himself — justified  by  these  grounds.  Moral  principles  in 
general,  therefore,  may  be  said  to  be  those  formulas  that 
are  widely  accepted  by  human  reason  and  made  premises 
for  conclusions  as  to  the  right  and  wrong  of  conduct. 

It  is  obvious  from  the  very  nature  of  moral  principles 
what  must  be  the  nature  of  any  universality  which  such 
principles  can  attain  or  continue  to  possess.  Principles^  in 
general,  have  no  existence  outside  of  the  rational  conscious- 
ness in  whose  apprehension  and  mental  employment  of  them 
their  very  being  consists.  They  are  not  entities  to  dwell  in 
mid-air  or  in  material  things,  or  to  be  "lying  around  loose," 
as  it  were.  Moral  principles  can  exist  only  in  the  con- 
sciousness of  rational  and  ethical  beings,  in  moral  selves, 
and  as  apprehended  and  employed  by  these  selves  for  the 
determination  of  concrete  cases  of  moral  judgment.  Their 
universality,  therefore,  can  never  be  abstract  merely — like 
the  laws  of  pure  logic  for  the  plain  man's  consciousness;  nor 
can  it  be,  like  the  law  of  gravitation,  simply  the  uniform 
way  of  the  behavior  of  beings  that  do  not  comprehend  the 
grounds  on  which  their  behavior  reposes  or  the  ends  which 
this  behavior  is  fitted  to  procure.  Moral  principles  can 
really  become  universal  among  men,  only  when  more  and 
more  living  individuals  actually  adopt  the  same  rules  as  the 
points  of  starting  and  of  control  for  the  intelligent  deter- 
mination of  what  they  ought  to  do,  and  what  they  ought  not 
to  do.  Such  increase  in  the  universality  of  moral  principles 
depends  upon  the  growth  —  nay!  it  is  equivalent  to,  and 
identical  with  the  growth  —  of  the  rational  and  ethical 
self-consciousness  of  mankind.  It  is,  to  speak  somewhat 
figuratively,  a  moral  coming  to  itself,  to  a  self-understanding 
and  a  practice  that  grows  out  of  self-understanding,  on  the 


892  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

part  of  the  race.  The  progressive  establishment  of  moral 
principles  is  an  evolution,  a  march  toward  the  Universal 
which  must  have  its  grounds  and  its  laws  in  somethiug 
that  is  common  to  mankind. 

If,  then,  a  discussion  of  moral  principles  as  having  uni- 
versal validity  is  to  attain  any  basis  whatever  in  experience, 
or  even  in  that  which  is  intelligible  because  it  states  itself 
in  terms  of  experience,  this  discussion  must  discover  some 
real  historical  grounds  for  this  progress  toward  the  Univer- 
sal. For^  so  far  as  man  is  concerned,  the  universality/  of 
moral  principles  is  a  progress  and  not  an  accomplished  fact. 

Let  it  be  noticed  that  I  am  not  proposing  to  inquire  into 
the  grounds  and  laws  of  the  total  moral  improvement  of  the 
race;  nor  do  I  even  assume  that  there  has  been  such  im- 
provement. It  is  not  as  though  ours  were  the  historical 
inquiry  whether,  on  the  whole,  a  larger  proportion  of  man- 
kind are  becoming  virtuous ;  or  whether  the  "  good  few  "  are 
becoming  more  virtuous ;  or  whether  the  general  level  of  the 
race  at  large  is  being  raised  as  estimated  by  the  scale  of  vir- 
tuous living  about  which  men  generally  agree.  Our  inquiry 
is  in  some  respects  more  simple,  although  perhaps  in  others 
more  complex  and  difficult  than  any  of  these  inquiries.  I 
assume  that  at  least  a  considerable  portion  of  the  race  is 
becoming  more  intelligent  and  self-conscious  as  to  the  laws, 
the  consequences,  and  the  import,  of  both  natural  and  social 
events  —  is,  in  a  word,  making  progress  in  its  mental  grasp 
upon  those  forces,  formulas,  and  results  that  enter  into  its 
own  experience.  Moral  principles,  as  a  part  of  the  increas- 
ing knowledge  of  the  world,  are  becoming  more  universally 
accepted  and  understood.  In  spite  of  the  appalling  fact 
that,  reckoned  by  numbers  merely,  such  a  large  proportion 
of  mankind  appear  to  be  making  no  progress  of  any  kind,  it 
is  still  true  that  the  progressive  part  of  the  race  is  in  the 
way  of  forcing  or  carrying  along  the  unprogressive  part 
toward  some  kind  of  agreement  upon  moral  truths,  as  upon 


UNIVERSALITY  OF  MORAL  PRINCIPLES  393 

other  forms  of  truth.  A  not  inconsiderable  advance  toward 
the  universality  of  moral  principles  is  thus  established  as 
an  historical  fact. 

More  than  two  thousand  years  ago  Aristotle  declared;^ 
"  There  is  no  human  function  so  constant  as  the  activities  in 
accordance  with  virtue:  they  seem  to  be  more  permanent 
than  the  sciences  themselves.  Among  these  activities,  too, 
it  is  the  most  honorable  which  are  the  most  permanent,  as 
it  is  in  them  that  the  life  of  the  fortunate  chiefly  and  most 
continuously  consists. "  Now  it  is  in  these  permanent  func- 
tions that  the  grounds  of  the  universality  of  moral  principles 
are  laid ;  and  it  is  in  the  growth  of  human  knowledge  as  to 
the  laws  which  these  functions  follow  that  all  actual  realiza- 
tion of  the  universality  of  these  principles,  thus  grounded, 
must  consist. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  add  to  what  has  already  been  said 
in  support  of  the  proposition  that  certain  permanent  and 
fundamental  forms  of  moral  functioning  belong  to  man  as 
man  —  are  the  common,  the  universal  characteristics  of  the 
race.  These  are  the  forms  of  feeling,  judgment,  and  voli- 
tion, which  are  the  characteristic  constitution  of  man  as  an 
ethical  being.  The  study  of  human  nature  from  the  anthro- 
pological point  of  view  shows  the  truth  of  Wundt's  con- 
tention: "Man  has  always  had  the  same  kind  of  moral 
endowment."  To  say  that  these  forms  of  functioning  are, 
so  far  as  man  is  concerned,  universal  in  their  validity  and 
applicability  is,  therefore,  either  tautological  or  superfluous. 
So  essential  are  they  to  every  conception  of  morality  itself 
that  all  other  rational  beings  —  inhabitants  of  some  distant 
planet  or  more  distant  star,  angels,  disembodied  spirits,  and 
God  himself  —  are  in  thought  necessarily  endowed  with  these 
same  forms  of  functioning.  It  is  in  these  universal  forms 
of  functioning  that  the  immediate  grounds  of  man's  moral 
development  consist. 

I  Nic.  Eth,  I,  X,  10. 


394  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

Moreover,  there  is  a  limited  number  of  more  definite  rules 
and  principles  declarative  of  what  is  right  that  arise  from 
experience  under  the  most  general,  or  even  universal  forms  of 
human  life  and  human  development.  To  this  class  belong 
those  most  primary  and  widely  applicable  ethical  formulas,  or 
conscious  generalizations,  that  are  based  upon  a  few  simple 
and  universal  relations,  such  as  those  of  the  family,  the 
tribe,  or  the  somewhat  more  elaborate  social  organization. 
For  example,  that  children  owe  some  sort  of  service  and 
obedience  to  their  parents,  and  parents  some  sort  of  protec- 
tion and  nurture  to  those  whom  they  freely  adopt  as  their 
children;  that  subjects  owe  some  sort  of  fidelity  to  rulers, 
and  of  service  to  the  social  organization  of  which  they  are 
members  (courage  in  battle  for  the  tribe,  etc.);  and  that 
members  of  the  same  social  organization  owe  a  certain 
amount  of  friendliness  to  one  another;  —  these,  and  some 
similar  judgments  of  worth  of  a  primitive  sort,  may  be  said 
to  have  had  a  nearly,  if  not  quite,  universal  existence.  They 
exist  because  they  have  been  consciously  accepted  by  adult 
human  beings,  and  made  major  premises  in  their  inferences 
about  the  right  and  wrong  of  conduct.  They  are  judgments 
of  worth  which  all  men  recognize  —  proximate  moral  princi- 
ples of  an  actual  and  practically  universal  validity.  Their 
universality  is  due  to  the  fact  that  they  grow  out  of  the  very 
constitution  of  moral  selves  as  related  to  one  another  under 
the  simpler,  and  therefore  more  universal  and  permanent 
forms  of  social  organization.  About  them  the  infantile  race 
must  be  more  or  less  enlightened  and  self-conscious. 

In  accordance  with  this  definition  of  the  words  it  is  diffi- 
cult to  find  in  reality  —  that  is,  in  the  actual  social  life  and 
social  development  of  humanity  —  much  that  answers  to  the 
conception  of  strictly  universal  moral  principles.  Indeed, 
principles  seem  to  be  less  universal  than  are  the  virtues. 
For  the  latter,  to  be  effective,  must  be  practised  much  more 
spontaneously  than  would  be  possible  if  every  one  were  com- 


UNIVERSALITY  OF  MORAL  PRINCIPLES  395 

pelled  to  arrive  at  them  by  way  of  deduction,  so  to  say,  from 
accepted  general  formulas.  Men  are  also  more  at  one  in 
their  opinions  as  to  what  are  the  duties  befitting  most  of 
their  different  relations  with  one  another  than  in  their 
opinions  as  to  the  way  in  which  the  rational  grounds  of  those 
duties  should  be  stated  and  applied  by  processes  of  reasoning 
to  concrete  cases.  It  is,  then,  primarily  through  their  com- 
mon feelings  of  appreciation  for  the  different  forms  of  the 
Virtuous  Life,  and  of  unreasoned  obligation  arising  under 
the  impulses  of  the  different  social  relations,  that  the  multi- 
tudes are  bound  together,  and  are  made  loyal  in  their  attach- 
ment to  any  universally  valid  Ideal.  Bad  as  the  conduct  of 
the  race  has  hitherto  been,  and  still  is,  and  important  as  are 
the  moral  failures  of  most  of  its  members,  it  is  true  of  the 
race  as  of  the  individual :  It  "  has  builded  better  than  it 
knew."  Achievement,  in  respect  of  particular  virtues  and 
duties,  everywhere  lags  behind  knowledge  as  to  what  those 
particular  virtues  and  duties  are.  But  knowledge  of  univer- 
sal principles  from  which  knowledge  of  particular  virtues 
and  duties  may  be  derived  by  a  logical  process  lags  behind 
the  achievement  of  those  same  virtues  and  duties. 

In  this  respect  ethical  science  and  the  philosophy  of  con- 
duct do  not  differ  from  all  forms  of  science  and  all  branches 
of  philosophy  that  get  their  principles  incorporated  into 
human  living.  For  example,  there  are  few  men  who  do  not 
indulge  their  appetites  in  ways  which  they  well  enough  know 
will  be  injurious  to  health;  but  they  are  even  fewer  who 
know  enough  about  the  principles  of  physiology  and  hygiene 
to  regulate  the  practice  of  individuals  deductively,  and  irre- 
spective of  those  experiences  in  which  individuals  do  not 
agree.  Again,  there  is  much  which  is  defective  in  all  exist- 
ing forms  of  social  organization ;  but  there  are  few  students 
of  sociology  who  can  enunciate  principles  that  are  adapted 
for  a  universal  applicability  by  all  members  of  any  particular 
organization. 


S96  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

On  the  other  hand,  as  respects  their  appreciation  of  virtue 
and  their  opinions  as  to  what  are  the  cardinal  virtues,  there 
seems  to  be  comparatively  little  progress  among  men  toward 
the  universal.  This  is  partly  because  —  as  I  have  just  said  — 
they  are  already  "  universalized  "  in  such  matters.  The  true 
nature  and  significance  of  the  principal  virtues  are  substan- 
tially the  same  for  all  men,  in  all  stages  of  moral  develop- 
ment. The  emphasis  is  different ;  the  mode  of  manifestation 
greatly  varies ;  the  external  actions  and  prevailing  customs 
are  bewildering,  changeable,  and  confusingly  unlike.  But  the 
good  man  generally  knows  his  own  brother  and  acknowledges 
the  kinship,  as  soon  as  he  comes  to  an  understanding  of  his 
character.  And  the  ethical  characteristics  which  it  is 
necessary  to  take  account  of  in  classifying  any  individual 
—  whether  virtuous  or  vicious,  good  or  bad  —  remain  essen- 
tially unchanged.  Thus  it  is  easy  to  believe  that  the 
African  Bakwains  were  sincere  in  their  declaration  that 
"nothing  described  by  the  missionaries  as  sin  had  ever  ap- 
peared to  them  otherwise,  except  polygamy."  The  "natural 
virtues"  attributed  to  the  Tongans  include  "honor,  justice, 
patriotism,  friendship,  meekness,  modesty,  conjugal  fidelity, 
parental  and  filial  love,  patience  in  suffering,  forbearance  of 
temper,  respect  for  rank  and  age."  Of  the  ethical  side  of 
the  Brahmanas  we  are  told :  ^  "  The  list  of  virtues  is  about 
the  same  as  that  of  the  decalogue  —  the  worship  of  the  right 
divinity;  the  observance  of  certain  seasons  for  prayer  and 
sacrifice ;  honor  to  the  parents ;  abstinence  from  theft,  mur- 
der, and  adultery.     Envy  alone  is  omitted." 

An  historical  and  anthropological  survey  of  the  ethical 
development  of  mankind  seems,  then,  to  establish  some  such 
conclusions  as  follow,  regarding  the  grounds  and  the  laws  of 
this  development.  Men  are  constituted  substantially  alike 
in  their  moral  natures.  This  common  constitution  of  men 
is  the  basis  of  the  universality  which  moral  obligations  and 

1  Hopkins,  Religions  of  India,  p.  204. 


UNIVERSALITY   OF  MORAL  PRINCIPLES  397 

the  accepted  forms  of  conduct  have  in  their  sight.  The 
sanctions  and  sources  of  moral  principles,  so  far  as  they  can 
be  subjected  to  an  historical  investigation,  lie  inherent  in 
that  moral  Selfhood  which  all  men  share.  Moreover,  inas- 
much as  we  find  men  from  the  first  existing  in  certain 
fundamental  but  relatively  simple  relations, — such  as  the 
family  and  the  tribe,  we  find  them  largely  in  agreement  as  to 
certain  judgments  of  worth  which  they  consciously  recognize 
as  binding  for  the  control  of  all  who  live  under  those  rela- 
tions. These  are  chiefly  the  relations  of  the  family  and  the 
tribe;  but  also,  always  and  everywhere,  the  relations  of  man 
to  the  gods  of  the  family  or  of  the  tribe.  On  this  universal 
basis  his  moral  life  depends ;  and,  resting  upon  this  basis, 
the  moral  evolution  of  man  goes  forward.  An  important 
part  of  this  moral  evolution  is  the  spread  of  an  improved 
and  enlightened  consciousness  of  moral  principles.  About 
the  way  in  which  this  growth  of  the  universality  of  moral 
principles  takes  place,  I  wish  now  to  make  a  few  suggestions 
that  would  seem  to  bear  the  light  of  history. 

The  reciprocal  reactions  which  go  on  between  the  moral 
consciousness  of  the  race  and  the  moral  institutions  which 
this  consciousness  has  builded  are  exceedingly  important 
in  the  evolution  of  universal  moral  principles.  These  reac- 
tions follow  a  law  which  I  will  venture  to  call  the  law  of 
the  redintegration  of  judgments  of  worth  through  ethical 
institutions.  In  explaining  this  law  it  must,  first  of  all,  be 
noticed  that  the  moral  progress  of  the  race  (and  of  the  indi- 
vidual as  favorably  or  unfavorably  affected  by  his  member- 
ship in  the  race)  consists  almost  wholly  in  two  classes  of 
particulars.  Both  of  these  are  pre-eminently  social;  they 
emphasize  the  aspect  of  growth  toward  the  universal.  They 
are  (1)  the  development  of  a  great  variety  of  institutions  of  a 
beneficent  and  morally  helpful  sort,  and  (2)  the  discovery  and 
extension  of  those  principles,  properly  called  moral,  which 
are  won  for  the  intelligence  of  the  race  through  experience 


398  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

as  to  the  consequences  of  different  forms  of  conduct.  In  a 
broad  and  loose  way,  then,  it  may  be  affirmed  that  the  moral 
evolution  of  man  consists  chiefly  in  the  development  of  right 
institutions  and  in  the  coming  to  consciousness  of  rational 
and  sound  principles  of  conduct.  The  mental  recognition  of 
good  moral  principles,  and  an  environment  of  good  institu- 
tions, even  when  operating  together,  will  not  suffice  to  make 
the  good  man;  but  they  do  make  some  kinds  of  goodness 
easier,  the  possible  sphere  and  influence  of  most  goodness 
larger,  and  all  goodness  more  rational  and  enlightened.  On 
the  other  hand,  ethically  improved  institutions  also  make 
some  kinds  of  badness  easier,  more  common,  more  far- 
reaching,  and  also  more  essentially  bad ;  because  the  badness 
knows  so  much  better  what  it  is  about  and  what  its  direful 
consequences  are  certain  to  be. 

It  has  already  been  shown  that  the  primary  factors  in 
the  moral  development  of  mankind  consist  of  the  practical 
recognition  of  particular  virtues  and  duties,  together  with 
those  simpler  judgments  of  value  which  give  the  rational 
sanctions  and  grounds  to  these  virtues  and  duties.  These 
are  activities  of  moral  consciousness.  But  next  stands, 
both  in  the  order  of  time  and  of  logical  independence,  the 
objective  forms  of  morals  —  the  customs,  laws,  common  and 
written,  and  other  institutions  which  are  the  products  of 
these  activities.  As  a  rule  these  institutions  precede  the 
moral  principles  which  become,  when  they  are  discovered, 
the  rational  justification  of  the  institutions.  For  men,  in 
general,  do  not  derive  their  customs,  or  enact  their  laws, 
or  rear  the  other  institutions  which  have  ethical  import, 
because  they  have  previously  reasoned  out  the  conclusion 
from  some  consciously  recognized  principle,  that  such  cus- 
toms, laws,  and  institutions  ought  to  be  adopted.  Human 
institutions,  as  a  rule,  spring  up  suddenly,  or  more  slowly 
come  to  be,  — the  men  who  build  them  not  knowing  either 
why  or  to  what  really  good  purpose.     And  the  same  thing  is 


UNIVERSALITY  OF  MORAL  PRINCIPLES  899 

true  in  ethics,  which  is  true  in  language,  in  every  form  of 
art,  in  religious  cult,  and  in  all  the  practical  life  of  man. 
Moral  principles  follow  the  institutions,  and  are  mainly  due 
to  reflection  upon  institutions  that  already  exist.  Man  first 
acts,  builds,  and  achieves ;  then  by  observing  what  he  has 
done,  builded,  and  achieved,  he  comes  to  an  understanding 
of  his  own,  hitherto  hidden,  laws  of  behavior. 

Ethical  laws  become  moral  principles  through  ethical  insti- 
tutions. In  other  words,  the  lower,  more  restricted  and  less 
self-conscious  judgments  of  worth  develop  into  consciously 
accepted  premises  for  all  conduct  by  means  of  reflection  upon 
the  nature  and  effect  of  existing  institutions.  For  customs 
and  laws  must  themselves  inevitably  be  made  the  objects  of 
critical  observation  from  the  moral  point  of  view ;  and,  as 
judged  from  this  point  of  view,  they  must  either  be  appro- 
bated or  condemned.  As  long  as  any  custom  or  law  conflicts 
merely  with  the  irrational  impulse  or  desire  of  individuals, 
it  holds  its  position  of  a  sanctioned  "external  imponent." 
But  all  morally  progressive  communities  are  constantly 
"breaking  the  cake  of  custom,"  repealing  and  changing  the 
laws,  and  building  anew  their  various  institutions.  The 
custom  is  judged  bad ;  the  law  must  be  broken  or  changed ; 
the  institution  must  be  modified  or  replaced.  Thus  by 
noticing  the  effect,  and  reflecting  upon  the  rationality,  of 
its  own  work,  the  moral  consciousness  of  man  recognizes 
better  the  character  and  import  of  this  work,  as  surveyed 
from  a  higher  and  more  enlightened  point  of  view.  The 
recognition  is  made  possible  only  because  experience  of  the 
work  has  resulted  in  elevating  the  average  judgment  of 
moral  value  to  the  point  of  view  held  by  a  morally  more 
enlightened  reason.  The  formerly  vague  and  fluid  factors  of 
the  social  consciousness  become  redintegrated  into  a  higher 
and  more  rational  form  by  means  of  experience  with  the 
results  of  its  own  constructions.  The  moral  stagnation,  if 
not  degradation  of  China  is  chiefly  due  to  the  fact  that  for 


400  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

centuries  nothing  has  been  effected  there  toward  this  form  of 
moral  redintegration. 

This  point  of  view  may  serve  to  show,  in  part,  how  much 
of  truth  there  is  in  the  contention  of  Mr.  Balfour :i  "The 
general  propositions  which  really  lie  at  the  root  of  any  ethi- 
cal system  must  themselves  be  ethical,  and  can  never  be  either 
scientific  or  metaphysical.  In  other  words,  if  a  proposition 
announcing  obligation  require  proof  at  all,  one  term  of  that 
proof  must  always  be  a  proposition  announcing  obligation, 
which  itself  requires  no  proof."  So  far  as  this  declaration 
means  that  physical  science  can  never,  of  itself,  furnish  the 
explanation  of  either  the  origins  or  the  sanctions  of  moral 
principles,  it  seems  to  me  undoubtedly  true.  But  general 
propositions  do  not  "  lie  at  the  root "  of  ethical  systems,  nor 
are  "  propositions  announcing  obligations "  dependent  for 
their  proof  on  other  similar  propositions  that  require  no 
proof.  The  rather  are  more  and  more  general  propositions 
the  flowering  of  any  ethical  system  that  would  take  human 
ethical  experience  into  its  confidence ;  and  those  propositions 
themselves,  thus  actualized  by  the  reflection  of  the  race  upon 
its  own  experience,  have  no  satisfactory  explanation,  and  no 
proof  at  all,  without  resort  to  metaphysics. 

In  illustration  of  the  law  for  which  I  am  contending,  let 
one  attempt  to  trace  historically  the  manner  in  which  a 
general  principle  respecting  the  morally  right  use  of  names  is 
coming  to  be  established  in  the  consciousness  of  mankind. 
No  name  of  any  person  ought  ever  to  be  employed  thought- 
lessly or  maliciously :  perhaps  one  may  venture  in  this  way 
to  state  a  moral  principle  which  would  serve  as  a  valuable 
major  premise  for  innumerable  more  particular  judgments  of 
worth,  and  which  also  shows  some  signs  of  progress  toward 
the  position  of  a  real  universal.  How  has  this  moral  evolu- 
tion of  so  valuable  a  principle  been  going  on?  In  obedience 
to  the  law  of  ethical  redintegration  as  already  explained. 

*  A  Defence  of  Philosophic  Doubt,  Appendix,  p.  337  f. 


UNIVERSALITY  OF  MORAL  PRINCIPLES  401 

In  tracing  this  development  one  would  have  to  observe  how 
the  instinctive  feeling  of  possession  and  of  rights,  which 
goes  with  the  name  of  the  individual  even  among  the 
savages,  has  combined  with  superstitious  fears  to  produce 
customs  and  laws  designed  to  guard  and  enforce  respect  for 
the  names  of  others.  Another  allied  branch  of  historical 
study  would  show  how  crimes  of  forgery,  or  of  perjury  in  the 
denial  of  one's  own  signature,  have  become  widely  recognized 
as  serious  breaches  of  morality.  Just  now  in  India  the  low 
moral  consciousness  of  the  natives  is  being  educated  toward 
a  somewhat  higher  plane  by  the  use  of  "thumb  impressions  " 
to  identify  their  signatures  beyond  all  dispute.  Doubtless, 
the  enforced  guardianship  of  the  seals  of  the  nobility  in 
Japan  is  destined  to  have  in  connection  with  the  rapid  lift- 
ing of  commercial  morals,  a  salutary  effect  in  this  respect 
upon  the  moral  consciousness  there.  The  history  of  the 
customs  and  laws  relating  to  the  libellous  or  insulting  use 
of  others'  names  reveals  another  side  of  an  essentially  similar 
experience.  There  is  at  least  a  hope  that  the  application  of 
the  same  generalization  to  the  habits  of  the  gossip,  and  of 
the  good-natured  but  thoughtless  signer  of  ill-judged  recom- 
mendations, is  destined  to  attain  more  and  more  of  general 
acceptance.  Major  premise:  The  name  of  a  person  —  my 
own  or  that  of  another  —  ought  never  to  be  employed 
thoughtlessly  or  maliciously;  minor  premise;  in  this  case 
the  name  of  some  person  has  been  so  employed;  ergo^  etc. 
It  is  surely  encouraging  to  think  how  much  of  wrong-doing 
and  of  consequent  misery  will  be  done  away  when  this  moral 
principle  comes  to  be  clearly  established  in  the  moral  con- 
sciousness of  men. 

Another  law  which  seems  to  be  made  obvious  by  a  study 
of  the  history  of  moral  development  may  be  called — The 
universalizing  of  moral  principles  through  the  abolition  of 
limiting  distinctions  between  classes  or  individuals.  In  the 
practice  of  the  virtues,  the  difference  between  the  lower  and 


402  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

the  higher  stages  of  moral  development  is,  oftentimes,  chiefly 
a  difference  in  the  range  of  the  relations  under  which  the  obli- 
gation to  the  virtue  is  felt.  For  example,  no  other  form  of 
morality  seems  so  loose  and  shifting,  so  difficult  to  establish 
upon  a  basis  of  clearly  recognized  principle  as  that  which 
concerns  the  sexual  relation.  In  general,  if  one  simply 
consults  the  historical  development  of  the  race,  it  will  be 
found  that  the  rules  for  the  virtuous  conduct  of  the  male 
differ  from  those  supposed  to  be  binding  upon  the  female; 
those  for  the  ruler  are  not  the  same  as  those  for  the  subject; 
those  for  individuals  of  especial  gifts  or  attractiveness  often 
permit  what  is  forbidden  to  ordinary  mortals,  etc.  But,  on 
the  whole,  the  tendency  is  manifest,  wherever  there  is  pro- 
nounced progress  in  moral  enlightenment,  to  bring  both  sexes 
and  all  classes  under  the  same  general  principles. 

Again,  ia  the  Nicomachean  Ethics,  although  justice  is 
regarded  as  the  whole  of  virtue  ^  and  friendship  is  held 
to  do  away  with  the  need  of  justice  in  the  case  of  fellow 
citizens, 2  it  seems  incredible  to  the  author  that  there  can 
be  any  talk  either  of  justice  or  of  friendly  feeling  as 
obligatory  on  the  part  of  masters  toward  slaves.  For  "  the 
slave  is  a  living  tool,  and  the  tool  is  a  lifeless  slave.  "^ 
But  as  soon  as  all  men,  not  excluding  bond-servants,  are 
apprehended  under  the  conception  of  a  common  citizenship 
in  the  heavenly  kingdom,  the  universal  principles  of  jus- 
tice and  kindness  are  applied  even  to  the  fugitive  slave  — 
"not  now  as  a  servant,  but  above  a  servant,  a  brother 
beloved."*  So,  too,  are  certain  principles  of  ethics  clearly 
enunciated  in  the  Brahmanas  which  are  prevented  from 
any  approach  to  a  general  application  by  the  distinctions 
of  class  and  caste  still  current  in  India.  All  over  the  world 
similar  distinctions  continue  to  oppose  the  actual  universality 
of  the  moral   principles  of   justness   and  kindness;  —  that 

1  V,  i,  19.  2  vin,  i,  4. 

8  Vin,  xi,  6.  *  Philemon,  16. 


UNIVERSALITY  OF   MORAL  PRINCIPLES  403 

is  to  say,  not  simply  the  universal  practice  of  these  virtues 
but  also  the  recognition  of  the  rational  title  of  the  principles 
to  be  universally  applied. 

It  is  beyond  doubt  that,  on  the  whole,  the  distinctions 
between  classes  of  men,  which  are  founded  upon  what  is 
more  adventitious  and  accidental,  are  slowly  being  cast  out 
of  the  controlling  place  they  have  hitherto  held  in  the  moral 
consciousness  of  the  race.  Unfortunately,  a  plutocracy 
is  taking  the  places  of  power  formerly  held  by  an  hereditary 
aristocracy,  or  by  rulers  distinguished  for  merit  in  war,  in 
council,  in  character,  or  by  virtue  of  some  peculiar  relations 
with  the  unseen  and  divine  powers.  Probably,  a  plutocratic 
aristocracy,  although  less  stable,  will  prove  itself  as  dis- 
agreeable, unsatisfactory,  and  even  dangerous,  as  a  military, 
a  landed,  an  hereditary,  or  a  priestly  aristocracy.  In  spite 
of  this,  the  distinctions  between  men,  as  made  by  wealth 
or  otherwise,  are  less  and  less  considered  when  questions  of 
the  supremacy  and  inviolability  of  moral  principles  are  put 
before  the  social  consciousness.  The  ethical  spirit  which  is 
winning  its  way  all  over  the  world  is  democratic;  men  are 
becoming  more  and  more  clearly  and  intelligently  pronounced 
in  the  opinion  that  distinctions  of  class  and  rank  do  not 
count  for  so  much  when  the  sanctions  of  judgments  of  worth 
are  concerned. 

Growth  toward  the  universal  on  the  part  of  moral  prin- 
ciples is  powerfully  affected  by  all  the  influences  and  insti- 
tutions which  tend  to  give  increased  solidarity  to  the  race. 
Growth  in  the  size  and  power  of  the  social  units  themselves 
is  of  great  efficiency  here.  The  old  Roman  Empire  never 
attained  a  true  social  unity.  Its  spread  tended  in  a  certain 
way,  indeed,  to  unify  the  race.  But  the  cement  which  held 
together  the  different  heterogeneous  parts  was  not  of  the 
moral  quality ;  neither  was  it  distinctively  social.  Some  of 
the  mighty  empires  and  growing  imperial  enterprises  of  to- 
day are  undoubtedly  running  the  same  risks  as  those  which 


404  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

ruined  the  ancient  structure.  On  the  whole,  however,  there 
is  far  more  of  intelligent  moral  principle  (far  more,  although 
still,  alas!  far  too  little)  which  gets  itself  applied  with  some 
logical  consistency  to  modern  social  and  political  affairs  than 
was  possible  two  thousand  years  ago.  Nor  is  it  the  devel- 
opment of  states  that  are  based  upon  an  improved  democratic 
morality  which  is  the  only  cause  of  the  tendency  of  moral 
principles  toward  a  more  universal  acceptance.  Intercourse 
of  every  kind  —  and  especially  the  interchange  of  ideas  and 
sentiments  —  between  different  states  is  assisting  the  uni- 
versalizing of  moral  principles.  As  men  know  each  other 
better,  they  come  to  understand  how  essentially  alike  all 
men  are ;  and  if  this  is  so,  why  should  not  the  same  general 
rules  of  conduct  apply  alike  to  all  ?  In  language  and  re- 
ligion, in  needs  and  hopes  and  fears,  in  proverbs  and  wis- 
dom, and  even  in  customs  and  laws,  they  discover  so  much 
of  fundamental  resemblance  as  to  justify  the  opinion  that 
common  principles  ought  to  govern  the  conduct  of  all  toward 
all. 

Especially,  however,  does  the  spread  of  the  essentially 
Christian  idea  of  brotherhood,  and  of  responsibility  to  the 
Father  from  whom  all  come  and  to  whom  all  go,  powerfully 
operate  to  secure  growth  toward  the  universality  of  moral 
principles.  How  can  one  set  of  moral  laws  have  sanction 
for  the  male  and  another  for  the  female,  one  code  apply  to 
the  ruler,  the  mighty  man,  the  rich,  and  another  to  the 
subject,  the  weak  man,  or  the  poor,  when  one  Creator  is  the 
Lord  and  Master  of  all ;  and  when  the  destiny  of  all  is  subject 
to  the  same  eternal  and  unchanging  ideas  ? 

This  growth  toward  the  universal  by  abolishing  distinc- 
tions between  particular  classes  and  persons  is  itself  met, 
however,  and  in  a  measure  checked  by  other  connected  facts 
in  the  moral  evolution  of  the  race.  The  resulting  complex 
experience  introduces  the  third  of  the  laws  that  control  the 
universalizing  of  moral  principles.     All  tendency  toward  a 


UNIVERSALITY  OF   MORAL  PRINCIPLES  405 

practical  solidarity  of  the  race  is  accompanied  by  an  increase 
in  the  complexity  of  life,  and  therefore  in  the  difficulty  of 
applying  moral  principles,  however  clearly  recognized  and 
constantly  kept  in  mind,  to  the  actual  solution  of  concrete 
cases  of  conduct.  When  the  social  organization  is  relatively 
simple,  even  though  different  sets  of  moral  principles  apply 
to  the  different  classes  and  different  relations  of  those  classes, 
the  practice  of  the  Virtuous  Life  needs  less  of  thought  and 
enlightenment.  If,  for  example,  one's  servant  is  to  be 
treated  as  a  "living  tool,"  one  does  not  need  to  trouble  one's 
self  so  much  about  the  precise  manner  of  treating  him  as  a 
servant.  Treatment  of  him  is  no  longer  a  matter  of  moral 
concernment.  If  the  male  has  no  obligations  to  sexual 
fidelity  toward  his  wife,  or  other  female,  then  the  virtue  of 
temperance  in  this  regard  needs  no  thought  for  its  applica- 
tion to  concrete  cases  from  some  well-conceived  moral  prin- 
ciple. If  one  is  morally  bound  to  love  only  one's  friend, 
and  to  hate  one's  enemy,  then  one  is  comparatively  well 
prepared  for  a  prompt  and  uncomplicated  discharge  of  obliga- 
tions toward  both  friends  and  enemies.  And  it  cannot  be 
denied  that  a  soothing  simplicity  is  imparted  to  the  prob- 
lem of  conduct,  if  your  principle  is  —  "  The  country,  right 
or  wrong  "  —  when  you  are  trying  to  govern  your  behavior 
toward  the  Chinese  or  the  Filipinos  according  to  accepted 
and  universally  applicable  moral  formulas. 

While,  then,  the  moral  evolution  of  the  race  has  witnessed 
a  tendency  toward  the  simplifying  of  moral  principles,  by 
abolishing  certain  distinctions  between  social  classes  and 
between  individuals  in  the  same  society,  it  has  also  wit- 
nessed an  increased  complexity  of  the  relations  in  view  of 
which  the  principles  must  be  applied  to  the  concrete  cases 
constantly  arising  under  the  new  conditions.  This  increased 
complexity  of  relations,  in  turn,  makes  necessary  an  increase 
of  skill  in  forming  judgments  of  moral  values ;  it  requires  a 
development  of  "  moral  tact. "     Such  a  change  is  well  illus- 


406  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

trated  by  the  difficulty  which  is  experienced  by  the  indi- 
vidual under  modern  conditions  in  respect  of  the  treatment 
of  beggary.  Under  certain  widely  prevalent  forms  of 
social  organization,  the  professional  beggar,  especially  if  he 
have  some  intimate  association  with  religious  hopes  and 
fears,  as  the  fakir  or  yogi  in  India  and  the  begging  friar  in 
mediaeval  Europe,  is  dutifully  dealt  with  as  a  class  apart. 
The  spontaneous  and  morally  acceptable  custom  is  to  give  a 
small  dole;  and  the  feeling  of  satisfaction  at  having  done 
right  is  the  normal  accompaniment  of  the  action.  When, 
however,  the  whole  experience  of  giving  to  beggars  is  sub- 
jected to  rational  reflection,  and  especially  in  view  of 
changed  social  conditions,  the  problem  before  the  man  of 
enlightened  moral  principle  is  made  much  more  compli- 
cated. For  him  every  beggar  is,  indeed,  one  of  his  fellow- 
men,  to  "  count  as  one  "  with  himself  in  the  universal  society 
of  mankind.  But  changes  in  the  social  conditions  of  the 
race  have  made  more  complicated  the  problem  to  be  solved 
in  each  particular  case,  even  after  one's  moral  principles 
have  been  reduced  to  this  highest  degree  of  generality. 

What,  now,  is  the  effect  upon  moral  development  in 
general,  and  upon  the  growth  of  the  particular  toward  the 
universal,  which  arises  out  of  this  conflict  between  increased 
simplicity  of  principles  and  increased  complexity  of  rela- 
tions ?  In  the  first  place,  the  repeated  effort  to  frame  par- 
ticular judgments  as  to  the  right  and  wrong  of  conduct,  by 
referring  these  judgments  to  universal  principles,  constitutes 
a  most  important  form  of  moral  discipline  for  the  individual 
and  for  the  community.  The  effort  forces  intelligence  into 
conduct;  it  compels  action  to  be  more  enlightened  from  the 
point  of  view  of  moral  reason.  It  is  by  the  habit  of  solving 
problems  of  practical  morals  that  skill  in  judgments  of 
moral  values  is  gained. 

But,  second,  the  reactionary  effect  upon  the  moral  prin- 
ciples themselves  is  the  matter  of  chief  concernment  in  this 


UNIVERSALITY   OF  MORAL   PRINCIPLES  407 

connection.  The  conflict  which  has  often  seemed  to  spring 
up  between  two  principles,  because  each  of  them  has  appeared 
to  apply  to  some  particular  case,  constitutes  of  itself  a  prob- 
lem that  demands  a  rational  solution.  Such  a  conflict  shows 
plainly  that  neither  of  the  principles  involved  can  claim  the 
sanctions  necessary  to  render  its  use  obligatory  as  a  ground 
for  drawing  conclusions  fitted  to  cover  every  individual  case. 
Some  higher  principle  must,  then,  be  discovered;  and  its 
discovery  marks  an  important  step  in  the  march  of  mankind 
toward  the  knowledge  of  those  supreme  principles  of  moral- 
ity that  have  an  absolute  and  universal  validity.  The  result 
of  reflection  upon  such  an  experience  is  an  expansion  of 
ethical  intelligence,  a  growth  toward  the  universal  in  the 
only  way  in  which  moral  principles,  and  their  sanctions,  can 
be  actualized  among  men.  This,  as  we  have  already  seen, 
is  through  their  conscious  acceptance  and  use  as  grounds  of 
inference  by  a  larger  and  larger  number  of  the  human  race. 

This  process,  or  law,  I  will  call  the  universalizmg  of  moral 
principles  through  the  practical  necessity  of  establishing  a 
rational  connection  between  particular  forms  of  conduct  and 
those  universal  principles.  Illustrations  of  the  working  of 
this  third  general  law  are  so  numerous  that  they  may  be 
derived  from  almost  any  form  of  human  experience.  Indeed, 
the  law  itself  is  only  an  application  to  problems  of  conduct, 
of  the  same  method  which  characterizes  all  growth  of  human 
intelligence.  In  the  physical,  the  linguistic,  the  psychologi- 
cal sciences,  the  constantly  increasing  complexity  of  the 
phenomena  demands  always  an  enlarged  knowledge  of  those 
universal  principles  which  are  thought  to  be  in  control  of  the 
phenomena.  But  in  ethics,  the  phenomena  themselves  are 
human  conduct  —  behavior  of  men  toward  one  another,  as 
moral  selves  socially  related;  and  the  principles  are  nothing 
else  but  the  generalizations  derived  by  reflective  thinking 
with  regard  to  those  rules  that  have  sanction  in  moral  con- 
sciousness, and  that  are  adapted  to  serve  as  points  of  starting 


408  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

for  a  deductive  argument  in  the  solution  of  concrete  cases  of 
conduct. 

One  more  general  experience  regulating  this  species  of 
moral  evolution  may  be  called  The  law  {?)  of  learni7ig  uni- 
versal moral  principles  from  particular  individuals^  hy  precept 
and  hy  example.  In  all  forms  of  human  development  the 
influence  of  remarkable  individuals  has  been  far  too  much 
underrated  or  neglected  by  modern  theories  of  evolution. 
Especially  is  this  true  in  human  ethical  development.  For 
such  development  consists  in  conduct,  in  opinions  about 
conduct,  in  institutions  that  embody  the  results  of  conduct, 
and  in  principles  that  have  the  authority  and  sanctity  which 
belong  to  ideals  of  conduct.  These  are  all  the  products  of 
individual  selves.  In  effecting  these  products  the  gifted  and 
favorably  circumstanced  individual  is  the  principal  factor. 

I  turn  aside  for  a  moment  in  order  soon  to  return  with 
added  reasons  for  my  conclusion,  to  protest  against  the 
whole  machine  theory  of  the  world  and  of  human  life. 
Everywhere  it  seems  to  me  that  this  theory  is  so  loaded 
with  the  very  facts  which  have  been  discovered  and  sub- 
stantiated in  its  behalf  that  it  is  destined  soon  to  break 
down  under  the  load.  It  has  been  my  welcome  task,  in 
preparation  for  this  study  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct, 
to  show  in  detail  that  all  the  most  fundamental  conceptions 
which  science  has  used  to  state,  defend,  and  expand,  the 
theory  of  mechanism,  are  themselves  derived  from  instinc- 
tive experience  with,  or  elaborate  reflection  upon,  the  life  of 
the  self-conscious  and  rational  Self.  These  scientific  con- 
ceptions have  no  validity,  no  intelligible  meaning  even, 
except  as  they  are  interpreted  into  terms  of  that  selfhood. 
But  when  we  give  scientific  consideration  to  this  Self  we 
discover  that  it  is  not  possible  satisfactorily  to  describe  it, 
or  even  superficially  to  state  its  numerous  performances,  in 
terms  of  a  psycho-physical  or  psychical  mechanism.  The 
Self  is  not  simply  a  more  elaborate  mechanism ;  the  rather  are 


UNIVERSALITY  OF  MORAL  PRINCIPLES  409 

all  mechanisms   conceivable   only   as   incomplete   and  partial 
selves. 

The  individual  will,  whose  the  conduct  is,  and  which 
undergoes  a  moral  self-development  because  it  is  a  rational 
and  self-determining  will,  can  in  no  case  be  considered  as 
merely  the  product  of  pre-existent  substances  and  forces, 
whether  ph3^sical  or  psychical.  Individuals,  indeed,  enter 
upon  their  historical  career  under  conditions  which  they 
cannot  alter.  But  individuals  are  never  merely  the  result- 
ants, or  the  expressions,  of  historical  conditions.  Individ- 
uals make  human  history  by  a  complicated  set  of  reactions 
upon  the  existing  physical  and  social  environment.  Great 
individuals  have  much  to  do  with  making  history.  On  their 
career,  which  is  more  than  ordinarily  the  effect  of  their  own 
free  and  rational  selves,  the  subsequent  history  of  the  race 
is  dependent  to  an  unusual  degree.  This  is  pre-eminently 
true  of  the  moral  evolution  of  the  race.  If  out  of  its  ethi- 
cal experience  there  were  taken  a  few  score  men  of  great 
ethical  influence,  the  moral  condition  of  mankind  would  be 
changed  indeed.  No  other  influence  has  had  so  much  to  do 
with  shaping  human  history  as  the  influence  of  a  few  great 
moral  and  religious  teachers.  Moses  and  the  Prophets  of 
the  Old  Testament,  Confucius,  Sakya-Muni,  Zoroaster,  but 
above  all  Jesus  and  his  disciples,  with  the  greatest  among 
the  succession  of  the  moral  teachers  and  reformers  which 
the  Christian  religion  has  produced,  have  exercised  a  quite 
incalculable  force  for  the  elevation  and  universalizing  of 
moral  principles.  This  they  have  done  both  by  teaching  and 
by  example.  It  is  doubtless  true  that  in  the  case  of  none  of 
these  teachers  has  the  enunciation  of  moral  principles  been 
something  wholly  new  and  foreign  to  the  most  enlightened 
moral  consciousness  of  their  predecessors  in  the  great  func- 
tion of  teaching  morality  to  mankind.  Even  in  the  case 
of  him  whom  Christianity  recognizes  as  having  supreme 
authority  among  these  teachers,  it  is  not  to  be  forgotten 


410  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

what  was  the  special  talent  for  ideas  and  ideals  of  righteous- 
ness shown  in  the  previous  history  of  the  people  from  which 
he  sprang. 

But,  on  the  other  hand,  he  minimizes,  not  to  say  distorts 
the  indisputable  facts  who  is  not  ready  to  admit  that  a  few 
individuals  have  thought  out  into  clear  consciousness  before 
their  own  and  following  generations  those  truths  respecting 
the  right  and  wrong  of  human  conduct  that  have  been,  pre- 
vious to  their  coming,  only  discerned  in  a  relatively  partial, 
fragmentary,  and  hesitating  way.  I  am  not,  then,  uttering  a 
mere  figure  of  speech  when  I  maintain  that  in  such  individ- 
uals the  supremest  moral  consciousness  of  the  race  culmin- 
ates in  a  most  surprising  way.  Nor  is  it  a  wonder  that  has 
no  justification  in  reality  if  the  multitude  comes  to  regard 
these  individuals  when  they  speak  of  standards  and  ideals 
that  are  above  the  accepted  standards  and  the  hitherto 
conceived  ideals,  as  having  the  sanctions  of  not  only  an 
external  but  an  absolute  and  divine  authority. 

In  every  age,  even  among  social  organizations  that  have 
reached  a  fairly  high  degree  of  moral  development,  individ- 
uals are  to  be  found  whose  discernment  and  use  of  moral 
principles  rises  much  above  the  level  of  the  multitudes.  Such 
individuals  refuse  to  take  their  principles  of  conduct,  chiefly 
and  in  uncriticised  form,  from  the  prevalent  customs,  laws, 
opinions,  or  institutions.  And  so  long  as  they  maintain  this 
position,  the  principles  which  they  do  adopt  as  their  own 
have  for  them  the  authority  and  the  sanctions  which  belong 
to  all  moral  principles.  Indeed,  without  this  authority  and 
these  sanctions,  the  rational  grounds  of  action  could  not  be 
esteemed  moral  at  all.  When  such  persons  inquire  into  the 
sources  of  these  principles,  and  of  the  right  to  control  them 
which  the  principles  seem  to  themselves  to  assume,  they  are 
accustomed  to  refer  either  to  a  Divine  Origin,  or  to  Reason 
(a  source  in  the  higher  rational  Self),  or  to  some  impersonal 
origin  to  which  they  give  gi^asz-personality  under  the  rubric 


UNIVERSALITY  OF  MORAL  PRINCIPLES  411 

of  Law.  In  either  case  the  moral  principles  are  regarded 
as  coming  from  a  source  which  is  higher  than  that  of  the 
custom,  law,  opinion,  or  institution,  over  which  they  consti- 
tute themselves  as  an  authoritative  judge. 

Those  moral  principles  which  are  either  discovered  or 
more  clearly  enunciated  by  the  moral  leaders  of  mankind 
are,  as  a  rule,  apparently  so  merged  in  the  general  level  of 
outward  forms  of  the  morals  of  society,  as  to  be  lost.  We 
cannot,  however,  believe  that  they  really  are  ever  wholly 
lost.  They  contribute  something  toward  raising  the  stand- 
ards and  the  ideals  for  all  judgments  of  moral  values ;  they 
do  something  in  the  behalf  of  the  march  toward  the  Univer- 
sal of  moral  Principles  and  toward  the  realization  of  the 
more  ultimate  moral  Ideals.  There  are  a  few  individuals 
in  every  branch  and  epoch  of  the  history  of  the  race  who 
have  done  much  for  its  moral  development.  They  have 
voiced  most  clearly  the  Universal  Moral  Reason ;  they  have 
seen  most  clearly  the  Ultimate  Moral  Ideal. 

By  reflecting  upon  its  own  experience  as  embodied  in 
institutional  forms,  by  abolishing  fictitious  and  incidental 
distinctions  between  individual  persons  or  particular  classes 
of  persons,  by  education  in  the  actual  application  of  accepted 
rules  of  conduct  to  concrete  cases  of  conduct,  and  by  favor 
of  the  teachings  and  example  of  preferred  individuals,  the 
growth  of  moral  principles  toward  the  Universal  has  taken 
place.  This  is  to  say  that  the  actual  advance  of  such  prin- 
ciples is  chiefly  dependent  upon  the  development  of  social 
and  political  institutions,  upon  the  spread  and  intensifying 
of  an  intelligent  democratic  and  Christian  spirit,  upon  the 
culture  that  comes  from  the  effort  of  individuals  to  live 
more  virtuously  according  to  conscious  rational  rules,  and 
upon  the  leadership  of  the  foremost  spirits  in  the  discern- 
ment, enunciation,  and  employment  of  these  principles. 

It  should  be  added  that  the  more  speculative  efforts  of 
great  thinkers  like  Plato,  Aristotle,  Aquinas,  and  in  more 


412  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

modern  times  Kant,  Hegel,  Locke,  Hobbes,  Hume,  Bentham, 
and  others,  have  been  of  no  inconsiderable  influence  in  the 
same  direction.  The  great  preachers  and  teachers  of  reli- 
gion have  also,  always  and  everywhere,  been  prominent  in 
moulding  the  moral  consciousness  of  mankind.  At  the  same 
time,  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  probably  those  who  have 
by  their  own  speculations  been  most  successful  in  reaching 
universal  principles  satisfactory  to  themselves  have  by  no 
means  contributed  most  toward  the  actual  universalizing  of 
moral  principles;  and  the  work  of  religious  preachers  and 
teachers  has  had  more  effect,  for  good  or  for  evil,  on  the 
practical  life  of  men  than  upon  the  acceptance  of  those 
higher  generalizations  that  should  serve  for  the  rational  and 
self-conscious  governing  of  that  life.  The  philosophy  of 
conduct  sharpens  the  critical  faculty  and  makes  the  mind 
more  self-conscious ;  but  it  operates  within  a  comparatively 
narrow  circle  in  its  influence  upon  the  growth  of  moral  prin- 
ciples for  the  race.  But  good  religious  teaching  makes  men 
better,  morally,  and  bad  religious  teaching  makes  men 
worse,  without  in  either  case  necessarily  putting  them  into 
possession  of  the  rational  grounds  of  conduct. 

All  the  forces  which  concern  the  growth  of  moral  prin- 
ciples toward  universality  have  their  reverse  side ;  they  may 
tend  to  narrow  and  degrade  rather  than  to  expand  and  to 
elevate.  To  live  in  the  environment  of  customs,  laws,  and 
institutions,  that  no  longer  represent  the  higher  levels  of  the 
popular  moral  consciousness,  tends  to  check  the  growth  of 
moral  principles.  The  continuance  or  the  re-establishing 
practically,  of  distinctions  among  men  that  are  only  of  a 
superficial  or  even  unethical  character,  has  a  similar  effect 
upon  moral  progress.  The  increase  of  the  plutocratic  spirit 
over  the  whole  world,  and  its  allied  development  of  the  spirit 
of  commercial  imperialism  and  of  race-hatred,  is  probably 
doing  more  at  the  present  time  than  all  other  antagonistic 
forces  combined  to  retard  and  degrade  the  moral  evolution  of 


UNIVERSALITY  OF  MORAL  PRINCIPLES  413 

mankind.  But  the  increased  complexity  of  modern  life  and 
of  modern  social  organizations  and  social  relations  is  won- 
derfully sharpening  the  wits  of  men  by  the  demands  which 
it  makes  upon  them  for  principles  of  conduct  that  will  apply 
to  the  solution  of  such  complex  ethical  problems.  Here 
again,  however,  if  the  truly  moral  solution  of  these  problems 
is  not  diligently  sought  and  somehow  found,  then  this  very 
social  evolution  itself  reacts  to  blind  and  blur  and  degrade 
the  rationality  of  moral  consciousness.  For  men  cannot 
come  to  act  habitually  without  regard  to  moral  principles 
and  yet  continue  to  hold  their  mental  grip  strong  upon  their 
principles  —  not  to  say,  advance  society  to  the  intelligent 
apprehension  of  improved  and  higher  moral  principles. 

All  the  while,  the  individual  —  every  individual  in  some 
degree,  but  in  the  greatest  degree  those  most  favored  intel- 
lectually and  socially  —  is  contributing  something  either 
toward  the  advance  or  toward  the  retrogradation  of  moral 
principles.  For  it  cannot  be  too  often  said,  if  one  has  the 
practical  ends  of  morality  in  view,  that  moral  principles  do 
not  dwell  in  heaven  or  in  mid -air,  or  in  the  merely  specula- 
tive dreams  of  theologians  and  philosophers;  they  exist, 
only  as  they  really  are ;  and  the  only  reality  which  they  can 
have  is  in  the  rational  consciousness  of  the  Moral  Self. 

Any  student  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct  who  reflects  in  a 
serious  and  prolonged  way  upon  the  conclusions  of  this  and 
the  preceding  chapters  will  detect  in  them  a  sort  of  con- 
cealed postulate,  if  I  may  so  say,  which  is  of  the  nature  of  a 
problem  demanding  further  consideration.  As  the  course 
of  moral  evolution  flows  onward,  whether  objective  or  sub- 
jective, whether  in  the  consciousness  of  the  individual  mem- 
bers of  the  social  organization  or  as  given  some  institutional 
form,  the  code  of  moral  laws  and  the  body  of  accepted 
moral  principles  always  seem  to  hold  a  certain  position  of 
authority,  —  claiming  sanctions  from  somewhither,  and  sit- 
ting in  criticism  over  what  has  already  been  accomplished 


414  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

for  the  social  realization  of  the  ideals  of  morality.  Moral 
reason  is  critic  and  judge  of  its  own  accomplishments  in 
such  a  way  as  to  be  always  dissatisfied  with  them;  it  mani- 
fests itself  as  endowed  with  power  and  authority  to  command 
their  modification  and  improvement.  Its  voice  has  the  char- 
acteristics of  an  "external  imponent."  This  fact  accords 
with  the  view  that  the  grounds  and  the  satisfactory  type  of 
man's  universal  moral  principles  must  be  found  in  the 
nature  of  his  ethical  Ideal.  And  it  implicates  the  problem 
of  accounting  for  this  Ideal  by  bringing  it  into  relation  with 
the  nature  of  the  Ultimate  Reality. 


CHAPTER  XYII 

CASUISTRY:    MORAL  TACT  AND  CONFLICT  OF  DUTIES 

That  eminent  good  sense  which  characterizes  the  Nicoma- 
chean  Ethics  leads  its  author  to  declare  respecting  the  solution 
of  cases  of  conflicting  duties  :  "  To  lay  down  precise  rules  for 
all  such  cases  is  scarcely  possible ;  for  the  different  cases  differ 
in  all  sorts  of  ways,  according  to  the  importance  or  unimpor- 
tance, the  nobility,  or  necessity  of  the  act."  ^  But  Aristotle 
immediately  adds  that  one  principle  is  tolerably  obvious, — 
namely,  no  one  and  the  same  person  can  reasonably  make 
claim  to  all  of  another's  obligations.  In  the  complicated 
relations  of  modern  society  this  ancient  cautionary  remark  is 
more  than  ever  needed ;  and  the  tendencies  which  this  society 
so  plainly  shows  toward  a  certain  equalization  of  claims  on 
the  part  of  all  individuals,  and  toward  the  universality  of 
moral  principles  in  the  manner  already  discussed,  have  made 
the  ancient  principle  somewhat  more  than  "  tolerably  obvious" 
(oxjK  dSrjXov).  Conflicts  of  duty  differ  in  all  sorts  of  ways ;  and 
all  the  members  not  only  of  that  particular  social  organiza- 
tion to  which  each  modern  man  more  especially  belongs,  but 
also  of  the  race  of  which  all  the  different  social  organizations 
are  parts,  make  increasing  demands  upon  one  another  for  the 
discharge  of  a  variety  of  moral  obligations.  Precise  rules  for 
the  solution  of  these  conflicts  are  therefore  becoming  con- 
stantly more  difficult,  not  to  say  impossible,  to  give.  The 
sphere  of  casuistry  seems  to  be  expanding;  it  seems  likely 
to  burst  through  excessive  expansion. 

1  Nic.  Eth.,  IX,  ii,  2  f. 


416  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

For  the  Moral  Self,  however,  the  practice  of  casuistry  is, 
always  and  essentially,  a  truly  rational  discipline.  Excessive 
punctiliousness  over  minutiae  of  behavior  is,  indeed,  not 
approved  by  the  enlightened  moral  consciousness ;  and  delay 
to  act  at  all,  through  doubt  over  the  way  in  which  to  act,  is 
often  a  loss  of  opportunity  for  some  good  deed ;  not  infre- 
quently, the  delay  itself  is  immoral  and  mischievous.  A 
certain  spontaneity  in  mental  movement,  especially  of  the 
affectional  sort,  seems  essential  to  the  practice  of  the  Vir- 
tuous Life ;  and  the  promptness  of  action  which  depends  in 
large  measure  upon  such  spontaneity  is  certainly  felt  as  an 
obligation,  and  is  approbated  and  rewarded  when  the  demand 
for  promptness  is  successfully  met.  Even  wisdom  and  pru- 
dence cannot  always  advise  —  strictly  in  their  own  interest  as 
cardinal  virtues  of  judgment  —  the  examination  of  reasons 
and  the  making  from  the  reasons,  of  deductions  affecting 
particular  cases.  For  such  wise  and  prudential  performances 
too  often  have  the  effect  of  rendering  the  other  cardinal 
virtues  of  courage,  justice,  and  kindliness  quite  impossible  of 
realization.  Persons  who  are  extremely  fussy  over  details 
of  behavior  —  even  if  it  be  "  for  conscience'  sake  "  —  are  not, 
on  that  account,  virtuous  beyond  the  ordinary  man ;  indeed 
they  may  be  quite  the  opposite ;  for  manly  virtue  must  always 
retain  something  of  the  proportion  and  largeness  of  spirit 
which  rationality  commands  and  guarantees. 

On  the  other  hand,  disregard  or  carelessness  of  details 
of  conduct  is  not  approved  by  a  refined  and  enlightened  moral 
consciousness.  In  the  business  of  living  wholly  virtuously 
—  that  business  which  is  always  on  hand  with  the  truly  good 
man,  whether  he  be  at  work  or  at  play,  and  even  if  he  be  not 
at  all  thinking  about  the  business  —  details  cannot  properly 
be  neglected.  Indeed,  here  as  in  all  business  matters,  much 
good  or  evil  depends  upon  how  provision  is  made  for  the 
details.  He  who  thinks  the  manner  of  doing  little  things 
does  not  count  in  character  is  the  servant  who  is  unfaithful  in 


CASUISTRY  AND  CONFLICT  OF  DUTIES  417 

that  wliich  is  least;  he  thus  shows  his  unworthiness  to  be 
trusted  with  matters  of  greater  import.  Indeed,  human  judg- 
ment as  to  what  is  great,  what  small,  what  is  most  or  least 
important,  is  far  from  being  infallible.  At  any  rate,  the  spirit 
and  habit  of  unfaithfulness,  the  temper  and  practice  of  dis- 
regarding duty,  are  of  the  very  essence  of  immorality. 

Modern  pathological  psychology  recognizes  both  these  ex- 
treme forms  of  moral  consciousness  as  morbid  and  inhuman. 
The  one  is  characteristic  of  a  certain  form  of  insanity ;  the 
other  of  what  is  bestial  and  monstrous.  They  who  attach  enor- 
mous importance  to  petty  details,  and  who  make  error  in  these 
details  a  matter  of  moral  life  or  death,  may  be  preparing  them- 
selves for  the  retreat  of  the  mentally  unsound,  rather  than 
for  helpful  social  intercourse  with  their  fellows.  But  they 
who  scorn  to  concern  themselves  about  all  so-called  "  matters 
of  conscience,"  and  arrogate  to  themselves  the  right,  in  the 
name  of  might  or  of  genius,  to  disregard  moral  principles  and 
moral  motives,  may  read  the  description  of  the  brotherhood  to 
wiiich  they  properly  belong,  in  the  following  words  of  the 
scientific  psychiatrist :  ^  "To  persons  of  this  '  moral  color- 
blindness,' this  perversion  of  the  altruistic  feelings,  the  entire 
prevailing  cult,  the  whole  moral  and  civic  order  has  only  the 
significance  of  a  restricting  limit  for  their  egoistic  feeling 
and  effort,  which  must  lead  them,  as  of  necessity,  to  the 
negation  of  the  sphere  of  others'  rights  and  to  attack  upon 
them."  Even  when  such  unfortunates  have  more  than  usual 
gifts  of  an  artistic,  logical,  or  inventive  order,  their  true  place 
is  not  in  human  society  but  in  the  madhouse ;  and  there  in 
certain  notable  instances  they  have  ended  their  misspent 
lives. 

Casuistry,  regarded  as  "  the  science  or  doctrine  of  cases  of 
conscience,"  is  therefore  entitled  to  rational  consideration 
from  the  philosophy  of  conduct.  For  it  is  a  species  of  ethical 
discipline.     Nor  can  any  valid    reason  be  given  why   the 

1  Krafft-Ebing,  Lehrbuch  der  Psvchiatrie,  11,  ii,  chap.  3,  p.  118. 
27 


418  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

attempt  should  not  be  made  to  put  this  discipline  into  some- 
thing resembling  systematic  form.  The  individual,  since  the 
consequences  and  even  the  moral  worth  of  his  behavior  has 
reference  to  others,  may  properly  enough  communicate  with 
other  individuals  belonging  to  the  same  social  organization 
in  the  common  effort  to  establish  some  such  quasi-science  or 
doctrine.  Men  may  teach  and  learn  from  one  another  in 
the  common  effort  to  solve  the  problems  of  conduct  as  well 
as  every  other  manner  of  problem.  Incitement,  guidance, 
instruction,  are  possible  in  the  moral  sphere  as  in  every  other 
within  which  a  multitude  of  selves  are  socially  organized 
with  reciprocally  determining  limits,  and  mutually  limiting 
interests.  Only  it  can  never  be  forgotten  that,  since  the  vir- 
tuousness  of  conduct  resides  in  the  attitude  of  the  Self,  and 
since  each  Self,  while  following  in  common  with  all  other 
selves  a  certain  universal  Ideal,  must  have  his  own  ideal  which 
it  belongs  to  himself  to  realize,  particular  problems  of  conduct 
can  only  he  solved  hy  actual  conduct;  and  conduct  forever 
remains  the  individual's  own  affair.  The  motive,  the  inten- 
tion, the  execution,  the  responsibility,  the  reward,  are  all 
primarily  and  pre-eminently  the  property  of  the  individual. 
No  individual  can  do  for  any  other  what  that  individual  ought 
to  do  for  himself.  No  man  can  usurp  the  place  of  conscience 
for  any  other  man ;  none  can  lay  off  his  duty  of  deciding  upon 
any  other. 

All  that  it  seems  further  necessary  to  say  upon  this  subject 
may  arrange  itself  as  a  brief  discussion  of  the  following 
three  topics :  (1)  The  Sources  of  Casuistry ;  (2)  the  Sphere  of 
Casuistry  ;  and  (3)  the  Conflict  of  Duties.  In  the  dictionary 
definitions  of  this  term  there  are  frequently  enumerated 
three  sources  of  casuistry,  —  namely,  "  Scripture,  the  rules  of 
society,  and  the  principles  of  equity  or  right  moral  reason." 
Now,  if  the  first  of  these  be  extended  so  as  to  include  all  the 
books  esteemed  authoritative  in  matters  of  ethics  by  the 
devotees  of  the  different  religions  of  mankind,  and  to  these 


CASUISTRY  AND  CONFLICT    OF  DUTIES  419 

be  added  the  injunctions  and  instructions  of  priests  and 
other  rehgious  teachers,  this  threefold  division  is  fairly  ex- 
haustive of  the  actual  sources  from  which  men  do  derive 
their  help  in  the  solution  of  cases  of  conscience.  But  to 
regard  either  Scripture  or  the  rules  of  society  as  a  primary 
source  for  solving  problems  of  conduct  is  to  depart  from  the 
very  conception  of  casuistry  as  a  truly  ethical  discipline. 

It  is  the  moral  consciousness,  the  "right  moral  reason" 
of  some  Moral  Self,  which  is  the  only  source  of  ethical 
judgment,  with  whatever  of  authority  and  sanctions  such 
judgment  may  possess.  Sacred  writings  are,  at  most,  only 
channels  and  not  true  sources  at  all.  So,  too,  must  the 
"  rules  of  society  "  either  be  received  as  merely  the  customs 
which  embody  forms  of  action  that  "  right  moral  reason  "  has 
already  sanctioned  ;  or  else  they  must  themselves  be  subjected 
to  the  criticism  of  moral  reason  in  their  application  to  every 
so-called  case  of  conscience. 

Undoubtedly,  the  moral  precepts  and  more  particular  rites 
and  ceremonies  prescribed  by  the  sacred  writings,  and  by  the 
expounders  of  the  various  religions  of  the  world  have  hitherto 
been  the  most  important  practically,  of  all  the  influences 
employed  for  the  settlement  of  cases  of  conscience.  Indeed, 
in  the  case  of  millions  of  men,  these  influences  have  largely 
taken  the  place  of  the  activities  belonging  properly  to  the  moral 
consciousness  of  the  individual.  But  this  they  have  done  in 
the  name,  and  by  the  alleged  authority,  of  other  moral  reason 
than  their  own;  —  e.g.,  in  the  name  and  by  the  authority 
of  the  gods  or  the  One  God  conceived  of  as  a  Lawgiver,  or 
of  some  principle  of  Universal  Reason,  etc.  Wherever 
the  necessity  for  applying  any  moral  principle  to  the  concrete 
case  has  been  lifted  from  the  conscience  of  the  individual, 
the  casuistical  procedure  has  ceased  to  be  a  genuine  ethical 
discipline. 

As  to  the  relations  in  which  so-called  "  moral  reason  "  stands 
to  its  own  products  in  the  form  of  the  rules  of  society,  enough 


420  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

has  already  been  said  to  justify  tlie  denial  that  it  can  ever 
look  to  them  as  an  independent  source  for  the  solution  of 
problems  of  conduct. 

If,  however,  we  affirm  that  moral  reason  is  the  only  source 
for  solving  problems  of  conscience,  we  are  at  once  reminded 
that  the  conception  of  the  process  used  in  dealing  with  these 
problems  must  be  something  different  from  that  of  arguing 
one's  way  from  general  principles  to  particular  cases  without 
violating  the  rules  of  the  syllogism.  Nor  can  this  process  be 
guided  exclusively  by  that  "  logic  of  feeling  "  about  which  so 
much  has  of  late  been  written  in  the  effort  to  free  judgments  of 
worth  from  the  hard  and  fixed  lines  of  evidence  and  proof  by 
which  scientific  judgments  ought  to  be  bound.  In  saying  this, 
the  very  language  reminds  us  that  any  difference  between  the 
two  classes  of  judgments  is  by  no  means  absolute.  In  ethical 
affairs,  judgments  of  feeling,  however  subtle  and  emotional, 
must  have  some  rational  grounds  ;  but  judgments  of  the  more 
scientific  and  strictly  logical  order  must  have  and  command 
some  feeling  of  their  truth  and  worth, 

1  will  say,  then,  that  a  sort  of  Moral  Tact  is  the  source  of 
such  practice  of  casuistry  as  can  rightly  commend  itself  to 
the  seeker  after  the  Virtuous  Life.  This  form  of  tact  it  is 
the  good  man's  duty  to  cultivate.  Thus  will  he  save  what  can 
be  saved,  under  the  hard  conditions  of  human  living,  of  the 
spontaneity,  grace,  and  beauty  of  virtue,  without  unnecessarily 
sacrificing  the  rational  quality  which  should  always  charac- 
terize virtuous  conduct.  In  this  way,  if  morality  is  always 
devotion  to  duty,  it  may  also  generally  be  good  sense  ;  if  duty 
is  essentially  an  inner  principle  which  compels  each  man  to 
strive  after  the  ideal  of  selfhood,  it  is  also  commonly  a  very 
practical  and  neighborly  affair. 

The  psychology  of  tact  is  an  extremely  difficult  subject  to 
treat  scientifically.  This  is  chiefly  due  to  the  two  following 
reasons  :  first,  the  factors  which  enter  into  any  judgment  of 
tact  are  exceedingly  subtle  and  evanescent ;  and,  second,  the 


CASUISTRY  AND  CONFLICT  OF  DUTIES  421 

complexity  of  the  combinations  of  these  factors  in  the  indi- 
vidual judgments  of  tact  is  very  great.  It  is  the  rapidity  and 
immediacy,  combined  with  a  certain  sureness  and  appropri- 
ateness of  his  conclusions,  which  gives  to  the  tactful  person 
his  admirable  ability  to  act  aright  under  complicated  condi- 
tions. This  judgment  has  the  characteristics  of  a  judgment 
of  first  intention,  as  it  were  ;  we  are  inclined,  therefore,  to 
call  it  "  perception,"  "intuition,"  or  "insight,"  rather  than  a 
conclusion  reached  through  any  conscious  recognition  of  the 
grounds  on  which  it  is  placed.  Indeed,  the  factors  which 
enter  into  the  concluding  mental  state,  the  decisions  that 
determine  what  is  to  be  done  in  the  particular  cases,  arise 
so  little  way  above  the  threshold  of  consciousness  (if  they 
come  up  out  of  the  sphere  of  the  psycho-physical  mechanism 
at  all),  and  blend  together  or  disappear  with  such  rapidity,  as 
fully  to  warrant  that  view  of  the  nature  of  tact  which  the  popu- 
lar language  implies.  The  How,  and  the  Why,  this  particular 
judgment,  rather  than  another,  was  actually  reached  cannot 
generally  be  assigned  by  the  person  whose  judgment  it  is. 
Now  in  matters  of  conduct  it  is  those  who  actually  have  moral 
tact  who  are  the  true  teachers  of  casuistry ;  but  they  teach 
by  example  rather  than  by  a  display  of  logic  and  didactic 
machinery.  In  order  to  be  genuinely  moral,  however,  the 
tactful  judgment  must  be  the  expression  of  a  trained  and 
refined  moral  consciousness. 

It  will  be  seen,  then,  that  the  theologian,  the  priest,  or  the 
moralist,  who  is  not  himself  a  man  of  genuine  moral  tact,  a 
person  with  a  "  trained  and  refined  moral  consciousness,"  can 
scarcely  become  a  trustworthy  casuist.  And  systems  of 
casuistry  emanating  from  ethically  impure  sources  are  not 
only  devoid  of  value  theoretically,  but  are  practically  mis- 
chievous. Indeed,  the  solution  of  cases  of  conscience  q.  e.  d. 
fashion,  by  one  moral  consciousness  for  all  other  moral  con- 
sciousnesses, is  a  snare  and  a  delusion.  But  moral  tact,  like 
the  ability  to  form  with  unusual  rapidity,  immediacy,  and  yet 


422  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

sureness  and  fitness,  other  kinds  of  judgment,  is  susceptible 
of  cultivation ;  within  certain  limits  it  can  be  both  learned 
and  taught,  although  the  rather  learned  by  practice  and 
taught  by  example,  than  learned  by  rule  and  taught  as  a 
pseudo-scienti^G  system. 

In  the  cultivation  of  moral  tact  four  things  are  chiefly 
necessary.     These  are  (1)   sensitiveness    of   moral  feeling  ; 

(2)  insight  into  the  motives  of  men  in  general  and  especially 
into  the  motives  of  those  composing  one's  social  environment ; 

(3)  experience  as  to  the  consequences  of  different  kinds  of 
conduct;  and  (4)  subtlety  of  ratiocination,  or  skill  in  the 
drawing  of  detailed  inferences.  That  sensitiveness  of  moral 
feeling  can  be  cultivated,  although  the  original  susceptibility 
for  it  differs  immensely  with  different  individuals,  there 
can  be  no  reasonable  doubt.  It  must  be  borne  in  mind, 
however,  how  exceedingly  varied  is  the  play  of  feeling  ap- 
propriate to  all  the  varied  situations  of  the  life  of  conduct. 
In  the  settlement  of  perplexing  cases  of  conscience  it  will 
not  do  wholly  to  rule  out  any  legitimate  form  of  human 
feeling,  from  the  most  deep-seated  but  righteous  indignation, 
or  the  most  heroic  disregard  of  suffering  in  the  realization 
of  a  higher  good,  to  the  most  refined  sentiments  of  pity 
and  of  tender  regard  for  the  feelings  of   others. 

The  knowledge  of  the  way  others  think  and  feel  also 
admits  of  cultivation.  For  the  great  multitude  of  human 
beings  these  "  others "  are,  indeed,  a  very  small  number ; 
of  the  most  of  the  race,  and  even  of  the  men  over  the 
nearest  mountains,  or  across  the  nearest  river,  not  to  say, 
across  the  seas — they  can  imagine  little  correctly,  and  can 
know  surely  almost  nothing  at  all.  But  even  this  narrow- 
ness to  the  range  of  their  acquaintanceship  has  certain  ad- 
vantages. It  makes  the  more  possible  an  insight  into  the 
thoughts  and  feelings  of  others  which  is  sufficient  to  enable 
the  individual,  if  he  will,  to  put  himself  into  the  place  of  the 
others.     Without   this   insight  one   cannot   obey  the  golden 


CASUISTRY  AND   CONFLICT   OF   DUTIES  423 

rule  and  love  one's  neighbor  as  one's  self.  Willi  regard  to 
the  consequences  of  good  or  bad  conduct  all  the  range  of 
human  foresight  and  human  calculation  is,  at  its  widest, 
narrow  indeed.  But  every  one  can  watch  and  be  thoughtful 
here.  And  to  act  without  any  regard  to  consequences  is  as 
immoral  as  abstinence  from  doing  our  duty  is  impossible, 
until  we  have  calculated  precisely  what  the  consequences 
are  going  to  be. 

To  cultivate  subtlety  in  ratiocination  is  also  possible. 
There  are  undoubtedly  dangers  connected  with  all  attempts 
at  such  a  form  of  cultivation  ;  and  these  dangers  are  somewhat 
akin  to  those  which  attend  the  too  great  refinement  of  the 
moral  sentiments.  Feeling  may  become  too  exquisite  for  the 
best  service  of  virtuous  living  under  the  actual  conditions 
in  which  men  have  this  life  put  before  them  as  an  ideal  for 
achievement.  And  reasoning  as  to  what  is  one's  duty  may  be 
habitually  conducted  through  such  winding  paths  of  consid- 
erations pro  and  con.^  and  with  such  an  array  of  "  but-ifs  " 
and  "  notwithstandings  "  as  to  result  in  the  partial  paralysis 
of  those  powers  that  best  carry  men  forward  in  straight 
and  direct  courses  toward  their  chosen  ends.  At  the  same 
time,  it  cannot  be  denied  that  life  is  increasingly  complex  ; 
and  this  increased  complexity  seems  to  make  necessary  an 
increased  skill,  amounting  to  subtlety,  in  the  use  of  that 
discursive  reasoning  which,  for  the  modern  man,  must  often 
take  the  place  of  the  animal  craft  of  the  untutored  savage. 

Fortunately  for  the  interests  of  the  man  who  is  heartily 
devoted  to  the  realization  of  the  Moral  Ideal  in  the  Virtuous 
Life,  there  is  a  certain  economics  of  casuistry  which  appears 
the  more  clearly  when  we  consider  the  sphere  within  which 
move  the  attempts  to  teach  in  a  systematic  way  the  right 
solution  of  particular  problems  of  conduct.  I  have  already 
said  that  the  rules  of  society  cannot  constitute  an  independent 
source  of  casuistry.  They  do,  however,  shape  a  certain 
sphere  within  which  casuistry  may  most  conveniently  and 


424  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

safely  receive  recognition  from  the  virtuous  man.  Broadly 
understood,  the  sphere  of  casuistry  is  coextensive  with  the 
entire  sphere  of  conduct.  Or  rather,  in  any  particular  case 
the  two  spheres  may  at  any  instant  come  to  coincide.  For 
the  otherwise  most  trivial  detail  may  at  any  instant  become 
of  the  greatest  ethical  import ;  and  all  the  powers  of  intel- 
lect, stirrings  of  the  heart,  and  energy  of  will  in  self-deter- 
mination, may  be  called  forth  in  the  interests  of  morality 
as  respects  this  detail.  But  ordinarily  the  general  submerged 
purpose  to  do  right,  in  connection  with  the  habitual  working 
of  moral  consciousness  under  conditions  that  are  familiar, 
best  meets  the  demands  of  virtuous  living.  What  to  do  in 
order  to  do  one's  duty,  how  to  act  in  order  to  act  virtuously, 
are  questions  which  would  better  appear  only  comparatively 
rarely  in  one's  consciousness.  It  is  ordinarily  better  to  go 
ahead  and  do  one's  daily  prescribed  duties,  without  thinking 
of  them  as  duties ;  simply  to  live  virtuously,  without  raising 
casuistical  inquiries  as  to  the  virtuous  or  vicious  cliaracter 
of  one's  living.  That  is  to  say,  the  moral  tact  which  is  the 
source  of  the  practice  of  casuistry  is  working  with  a  satisfac- 
tory smoothness.  Magnanimity,  and  other  of  the  nobler 
virtues,  are  very  desirable  to  secure  in  conjunction  with  a 
minute  regard  to  the  details  of  one's  own  daily  conduct ;  but 
this  is  nearly  impossible  where  the  mind  is  much  given  to 
regard  for  the  details  of  the  conduct  of  other  people.  It  is 
right  ordinarily  to  lower  the  window  or  open  the  door,  with- 
out attaching  any  moral  import  to  the  transaction  ;  or  to  put 
on  a  dress  suit  as  a  matter  of  course  in  compliance  with 
etiquette  when  accepting  an  invitation  to  dinner.  But 
thoughtlessly  to  let  a  dangerous  draught  upon  some  invalid 
would  be  a  grave  fault ;  and  deliberately  to  lower  a  window 
upon  a  relative  in  whose  death  we  were  interested  might  be 
no  less  a  crime  than  murder.  Nor  are  occasions  wanting 
where  no  little  thought  is  necessary  to  determine  how  one 
ought  to  dress  in  order  to  dress  virtuously. 


CASUISTRY  AND  CONFLICT  OF  DUTIES  425 

In  the  vast  number  of  cases  the  rules  of  the  society  with 
which  he  is  either  temporarily  or  more  permanently  con- 
nected have  settled  for  the  individual  the  manner  of  his 
behavior  in  respect  to  details  of  a  certain  sort.  These  rules 
are  themselves,  to  be  sure,  constantly  changing ;  and  their 
changes  are  largely  due  to  changes  of  judgment  and  feeling 
respecting  the  moral  propriety  of  the  rules  themselves.  Some 
of  these  rules  are  almost  sure  to  violate  certain  principles  of 
morality  recognized  by  those  who  are  sensitive  to  ethical 
considerations  and  bent  on  realizing  their  ideal  of  moral  self- 
hood. Thus  the  keeping  or  the  breacli  of  these  rules  may 
become  a  problem  in  casuistry  —  difficult  to  solve  and  of  no 
small  ethical  importance.  But  ordinarily,  and  in  the  large, 
the  man  who  aims  at  being  wholly  virtuous  will  let  the  rules 
of  society  decide  for  him  what  he  should  do,  will  simply  com- 
ply with  those  rules ;  he  will  tlms  set  free  his  more  distinctively 
moral  consciousness  for  better  business  than  making  compli- 
ance or  non-compliance  with  petty  details  of  behavior  a  case 
of  conscience.  He  considers  that  it  is  as  irrational,  and  may 
be  as  unethical,  to  make  wearing  no  buttons  a  matter  of  con- 
science as  to  make  wearing  a  particular  number  and  kind  of 
buttons  a  matter  of  pride  at  being  in  the  fashion. 

The  commitment  of  his  conduct  on  the  part  of  the  individ- 
ual to  the  rules  of  society  rather  than  to  his  own  moral 
judgment  is  most  rational  in  matters  of  etiquette,  in  matters 
of  professional  and  technical  behavior,  as  it  were,  and  in 
certain  classes  of  personal  habits.  In  such  matters,  unless 
there  exists  some  special  reason  to  the  contrary,  one  may 
hold  that  the  moral  quality  of  the  action  varies  with  the 
custom  and  derives  itself  most  directly  from  the  custom. 
In  these  matters,  when  in  Rome  one  does  as  the  Romans  do. 
What  would  be  indecent  and  lewd  under  some  circumstances 
would  be  prudish  under  otlier  circumstances.  To  omit  what 
would  be  servile  and  lacking  in  proper  self-respect  in  some 
communities  would  be  rudeness  and  deficiency  in  due  respect 


426  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

for  others,  in  other  communities.  In  all  such  cases  the  true 
casuist  tries  to  find  out  what  are  esteemed  good  manners  and 
then  calls  into  exercise  all  the  refinement  of  feeling  and  sure- 
ness  of  judgment  he  can  command  in  the  desire  to  conform 
to  the  current  standard  of  good  manners.  For  although 
manners  are  not  synonymous  with  morals,  and  morals  are 
not  all  that  is  most  important  in  morality,  thoughtlessly  or 
deliberately  bad  manners  are  usually  immoral.  Where  de- 
partures from  the  rules  of  society  are  due  to  an  excusable 
ignorance,  the  enlightened  moral  consciousness  makes  light 
of  them ;  and  in  general,  in  the  case  of  others,  one  should  be 
careful  not  to  err  on  the  side  of  excessive  punctiliousness. 
But  that  habitual  disregard  for  polite  manners,  which,  for 
example.  Occidental  nations  show  in  their  treatment  of  Orien- 
tal peoples  is  something  worse  than  pardonable  boorishness ; 
it  is  the  expression  of  an  immoral  haughtiness  and  unfriend- 
liness which  is  most  certainly  none  the  better  because  it  is 
also  coarse  and  vulgar. 

In  the  majority  of  cases,  amidst  the  freer  social  organiza- 
tions of  modern  civilization,  he  who  dissents  from  the  rules  of 
society  on  moral  grounds  can  save  his  good  conscience  by  not 
consorting  with  others  in  the  more  objectionable  forms  of 
organization.  Rarely  does  the  "good  conscience"  require 
that  the  individual  should  join  the  society  whose  rules  he 
intends,  "  for  conscience'  sake,"  habitually  to  set  at  naught. 
It  might  have  been  necessary  for  the  newly  converted  captain 
of  tlie  host  of  the  king  of  Syria  to  provide  against  a  serious 
misinterpretation  of  his  beliavior  as  both  a  servant  of  the 
Syrian  king  and  a  believer  in  the  foreign  god,  Yahveh  :  "  In 
this  thing  the  Lord  pardon  thy  servant,  that  when  my  master 
goeth  into  the  house  of  Rimmon  to  worship  there,  and  he 
leaneth  on  my  hand,  and  I  bow  myself  in  the  house  of  Rim- 
mon: when  I  bow  down  myself  in  the  house  of  Rimmon, 
the  Lord  pardon  thy  servant  in  this  thing"  (2  Kings,  v,  18). 
It  may  also  be  doubted  how  far  Elisha  intended  to  approve 


CASUISTRY  AND  CONFLICT  OF  DUTIES  427 

this  bit  of  casuistical  subtlety,  when  he  bade  Naaman  "  Go 
in  peace."  But  there  are  at  present  relatively  fewer  cases 
where  the  applicability  of  the  rules  of  society  is  not  a  matter 
dependent  upon  the  will  of  the  individual.  If  the  visiting 
American  objects  to  kissing  the  hand,  or  receiving  the  bless- 
ing, of  the  pope  he  need  not  seek  admittance  to  the  pope's 
receptions.  And  he  whose  conscience  is  offended  by  having 
to  bow  low  three  times  on  entering  into  and  departing  from 
the  presence  of  the  Mikado  ought  not  to  allow  others  to  ask 
the  imperial  audience  for  him. 

In  not  a  few  cases,  however,  where  the  rules  of  society  and 
the  moral  consciousness  of  the  individual  come  into  conflict 
the  settlement  of  the  path  to  be  followed  is  not  so  easy.  For 
the  good  man  cannot  go  entirely  out  of  society.  In  the  more 
proper  meaning  of  this  word  "society,"  to  attempt  to  with- 
draw from  it  altogether  would,  if  it  could  be  successful,  take 
the  individual  totally  out  of  the  sphere  of  ethics.  This  would 
be  a  solution  of  all  possible  cases  of  conscience  indeed ;  but 
it  would  also  be  to  make  social  morality  impossible.  To 
keep  any  vestige  of  moral  goodness  in  the  most  pronounced 
solitary  ascetic,  God  and  he  must  constitute  a  sort  of  society. 
Nor  can  it  be  denied  that  in  most  cases  no  little  of  what  is 
popularly  called  "sociability"  is  conducive  to  the  highest 
development  of  the  Virtuous  Life.  But  in  all  this  the  Moral 
Self  must  retain  its  own  integrity.  Hence  there  arises  the 
necessity  of  being  always  ready  to  refer  the  right  of  society 
to  control  the  individual  back  to  the  source  of  all  rules,  to 
the  moral  reason ;  and  thus  the  need  of  moral  tact  is  made 
prominent  again. 

The  minor  and  relatively  unimportant  cases  of  the  Conflict 
of  Duty  usually  occur  in  the  sphere  of  social  details.  But 
conflicts  of  duty  are  apt  to  arise  which  are  of  a  far  more  por- 
tentous character.  And  to  such  experiences  some  reference 
is  now  in  place. 

Many  writers  on  the  philosophy  of  conduct  —  and  among 


428  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

them  even  Professor  T.  H.  Green  ^  —  have  denied  the  possi- 
bility of  such  an  experience  as  a  genuine  conflict  of  duties. 
On  the  other  hand,  others  have  claimed  that,  inasmuch  a-s 
the  entire  tendency  of  moral  development  is  monistic,  and 
toward  a  unifying  of  the  entire  life  of  conduct  under  the  con- 
trol of  some  one  principle,  conflict  is  a  necessary  result  of 
all  effort  at  moral  development.  According  to  Simmel,  for 
example,  the  conflict  of  duties  arises,  as  an  essential  moment 
in  the  progress  of  -ethical  monism,  in  either  of  two  ways : 
first,  when  a  higher  principle  comes  down  from  without,  as 
it  were,  upon  two  or  more  contiguous  and  hitherto  concord- 
ant classes  of  duties  and  forces  a  choice  between  them ;  or 
else,  second,  when  the  more  internal  development  of  two 
related  duties  forces  them  further  and  further  apart  until 
they  become  antagonistic.  A  marked  instance  of  the  first 
class  occurred  when,  in  the  fourth  century,  the  Christian 
bishops  were  ordered  to  put  away  their  wives,  and  fidelity  to 
the  office  became  incompatible  with  fidelity  to  the  family 
relation,  because  the  authority  of  the  Church  dominated 
both  relations.  Instances  of  the  second  class  are  constantly 
occurring  where  Church  and  State  interfere  with  each  other 
in  matters  that  have  customarily  been  controlled  exclusively 
by  one  of  the  two.^ 

The  abstract  way  of  treating  this  subject  is,  I  think,  inap- 
propriate to  its  character;  it  is  also  inconsistent  with  the 
view  which  finds  the  unifying  principle  of  so-called  "monis- 
tic ethics  "  not  to  reside  in  any  form  of  a  moral  law  but  in 
the  unity  which  belongs  to  a  Moral  Self  following  its  indi- 
vidual Ideal.  Duties  are  not  entities  ready-made  with  cor- 
responding or  antagonistic  characters  between  which  one  must 
choose  as  one  chooses  which  pattern  of  cloth  one  will  have 
made  into  a  suit  of  clothes.  Nor  are  duties  fixed  conceptions 
of  what  ought  to  be  done  by  every  individual  in  accordance 

1  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  p.  355. 

2  See  Simmel,  Einleitung  in  die  Moralwissenschaft,  11,  pp.  380  ffi 


CASUISTRY  AND   CONFLICT  OF   DUTIES  429 

with  unalterable  laws.  Duties  are  concrete  individual  forms 
of  conduct  which  must  realize  themselves  in  the  individual 
moral  consciousness,  and  which  are  continually  liable  to 
change  the  form  of  their  expression.  The  problem  of  con- 
duct is  therefore  always  capable  of  statement  somewhat  as 
follows :  Is  this  particular  conduct  my  duty,  at  this  particular 
time,  under  these  particular  conditions,  and  as  something 
owing  from  me  to  this  particular  person  ?  Every  factor  of 
the  problem  is  particular,  and  dependent  upon  a  variety  of 
accordant  or  conflicting  particulars.  Moreover,  ethical  con- 
flicts are  not  clashes  of  material  entities  or  of  physical  forces 
that  take  place  outside  of  moral  selves ;  they  are  not  mere 
conceptions  of  the  meeting  of  such  entities  or  forces.  Ethi- 
cal conflicts  are  conflicts  of  soul.  Conflicts  of  duty  are  just 
this  —  namely,  actual  struggles  of  the  feelings  of  obligation 
because  the  ethical  judgment  cannot  be  made  clear.  They, 
therefore,  certainly  do  exist  with  the  only  kind  of  existence 
which  they  could  be  conceived  of  as  having.  To  deny  their 
existence  is  about  as  inane  and  comfortless  a  "psychologi- 
cal fallacy,"  due  to  excessive  abstraction,  as  can  possibly  be 
devised. 

Moreover,  there  seems  to  be  much  truth  in  the  view  that 
the  very  nature  of  man's  moral  development  makes  necessary 
a  conflict  of  duties.  Certainly  the  fact  appears  to  be  that, 
under  existing  conditions,  the  more  developed  ethically  any 
individual  becomes,  the  more  are  the  chances  increased  of 
the  occurrence  of  many  such  conflicts.  To  avoid  conflicts  of 
this  character  it  would  seem  necessary  never  to  make  one's 
conduct  a  case  of  conscience  at  all.  Bluntness  of  sensibility 
and  inertia  of  judgment  on  moral  matters  is  most  favorable 
to  that  quietness  which  consists  in  freedom  from  the  per- 
plexity of  asking  one's  self  to  settle  troublesome  ethical 
questions.  But  this  is  moral  consciousness  asleep,  not 
moral  consciousness  at  peace  with  itself.  Always  to  be 
cock-sure  what  is  duty,  and  always  to  be  satisfied  in  retro- 


430  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

spect  that  one's  duty  has  been  done  in  the  best  possible 
manner,  does  not  prove  a  superior  moral  insight  or  rational 
soundness  of  judgment;  it  may  the  rather  show  a  meagre 
ethical  nature  and  a  deficiency  of  interest  in  the  real  values 
of  human  life. 

Still  further  does  it  seem  true  that,  after  all,  human  life 
is  greatly  enriched,  made  more  interesting  and  better  worth 
the  living,  by  these  battles  that  are  best  worth  the  fighting ; 
for  they  are  battles  in  the  interests  of  that  which  has  the 
highest  worth.  And  certainly,  from  the  sesthetical  point  of 
view  cases  of  conflict  of  duties,  where  the  struggle  is  of  the 
life-or-death  order  and  the  stakes  at  issue  are  the  salvation 
of  the  higher  Self,  are  the  sublimest  things  in  human  history. 
The  noblest  tragedies  celebrate  such  conflicts.  There  is 
Antigone  with  all  her  soul's  affection  and  her  most  cherished 
sense  of  obligation  committed  to  the  act  of  putting  the  neces- 
sary three  handfuls  of  dust  upon  her  brother's  corpse ;  and 
in  conflict  with  this  command  of  sisterly  affection  and  duty 
are  the  duty  of  obedience  to  the  highest  external  authority 
and  to  the  wise  counsels  of  the  experienced  old  men  of  the 
chorus.  What  shall  one  poor  girl  do  when  torn  apart  in 
two  directions  by  moral  forces  so  mighty  as  these  ?  It  is  the 
necessity  for  answering  such  a  question  as  this,  in  which  the 
tragedy  of  many  a  humble  human  life  consists. 

Conflicts  of  duty  that  are  real  and  that  call  upon  the 
individual  for  much  painful  but  disciplinary  and  improving 
use  of  his  ethical  powers  may  arise  in  any  one  of  several 
different  ways.  In  one  class  of  cases  moral  feeling  and 
ethical  judgment  are  found  in  conflict.  The  rational  and 
intelligent  conclusion  from  moral  principles  as  to  what  is 
duty  stirs  up  feelings  of  obligation  and  of  approbation  or 
disapprobation  that  conflict  with  the  conclusion.  Then  the 
mind  knows  it  ought  to  do  what  it  feels  ought  not  to  be 
done;  or  knows  it  ought  not  to  do  what  it  feels  ought  to  be 
done.     This  sort  of  conflict  belongs  necessarily  to  all  the 


CASUISTRY  AND  CONFLICT  OF  DUTIES  431 

more  intelligent  and  deliberate  changes  of  habit  in  matters 
that  are  made  distinctively  moral  (comp.  p.  90  f).  In  all 
such  cases  the  problem  before  the  man  who  would  live 
virtuously  is  this,  —  how  to  develop  rationality  in  con- 
duct upon  a  basis  of  larger  experience,  without  losing  that 
tenderness  and  sensitiveness  of  moral  sentiment  which  it 
is  so  beautiful  and  praiseworthy  to  retain. 

Another  class  of  conflicts  of  duty  arises  when  two  or  more 
persons,  or  groups  of  persons,  require  from  us  modes  of 
behavior  that  are  incompatible.  Every  individual  life  is  full 
of  this  kind  of  conflicts.  Within  the  circle  of  the  family  the 
husband  may  have  to  decide  between  duties  owing  to  his  wife 
and  those  owing  to  his  child,  and  the  wife  may  have  a  simi- 
lar decision  to  make ;  the  child  may  have  to  choose  to  which 
of  its  two  parents  it  will  remain  obedient,  even  when  the 
matter  of  conflict  would  not  of  itself  originate  the  conflict 
unless  it  were  commanded  by  two  authorities.  Either  of  the 
parents  may  require  that  which  the  child  cannot  in  con- 
science perform,  and  so  give  rise  to  that  choice  which,  when 
viewed  from  the  religious  point  of  view,  is  so  often  called 
choosing  between  obeying  God  and  obeying  man.  So,  too, 
do  duties  to  one's  family  —  especially  for  the  overburdened 
man  whose  entire  life  is  a  doing  of  duty  to  somebody  by 
conducting  conscientiously  his  business  or  profession  —  not 
infrequently  conflict  with  duties  to  society.  The  different 
social  circles  which  surround  every  individual,  and  the 
different  social  organizations  with  which  he  is  more  or  less 
closely  connected,  all  make  their  demands  upon  interest, 
time,  strength,  and  property;  and  these  demands  are  in 
almost  perpetual  condition  of  conflict.  Here,  especially,  the 
more  the  sphere  of  one's  conduct  expands,  and  the  more  the 
quality  of  one's  conduct  becomes  a  matter  of  moral  concern- 
ment, the  more  numerous  and  severe  the  conflicts  are  likely 
to  become.  And  then  there  are  the  demands  of  the  religious 
nature  with  its  longings,  at  least  occasionally,  to  get  away 


432  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

from  all  social  obligations,  to  commune  with  one's  Self  and 
be  still;  and  to  know  something  more  of  the  "peace  of  God." 

Still  another  class  of  conflicts  of  duty  arises  when  the  very 
virtues  themselves  —  and,  in  extreme  cases,  those  of  the  most 
cardinal  order  —  fall  out  with  one  another.  How  shall  one 
always,  in  a  practical  way,  be  both  courageous  and  pru- 
dent, angry  and  sympathetic,  just  and  kindly,  truthful  and 
polite,  loyal  to  one's  higher  selfhood  and  actually  helpful 
to  society,  at  one  and  the  same  time.  Shall  one  insist 
on  punishment  or  on  pardon  for  the  offender  ?  Shall  one 
throw  one's  life  into  the  breach  at  the  risk,  or  with  the 
certainty,  of  losing  it,  or  shall  one  save  one's  life  for  other 
battles  ?  Shall  one  speak  and  act  out  the  truth  that  is 
most  offensive  and  disagreeable  to  the  populace,  with  only 
a  possibility  that  it  will  be  salutary ;  or  shall  one  wait  in 
silent  hope  that  some  other  tongue  will  speak  the  same 
truth  in  a  more  agreeable  and  salutary  way  ?  Life  is 
made  up,  to  no  small  extent,  of  such  problems  of  practi- 
cal morals  as  these ;  and  to  deny  that  they  are  real  conflicts 
of  duty  is  to  offer  empty  phrases  for  the  instruction  and 
consolation  which  all  attempt  at  goodness  so  much  needs. 

Feeling  conflicts  with  judgment,  and  custom  often  conflicts 
with  both;  the  demands  of  individuals  and  classes  conflict 
and  no  one  can  ever  satisfy  all  their  demands;  even  the 
virtues  themselves  seem  at  times  to  be  variant.  What  shall 
the  good  man  do  ?  In  what  consists  the  truly  virtuous  life  ? 
The  good  man  must  stand  up  to  the  conflict  and  do  the  best 
he  can  in  it ;  for  in  this  consists  the  very  essence  of  the  vir- 
tuous life  itself.  And  here  the  principle  of  individuality  as 
a  relation  of  every  Moral  Self  to  its  own  Moral  Ideal,  although 
each  individual  ideal  is  worked  out  in  a  social  organization 
of  similarly  constituted  selves,  shines  forth  again  to  guide 
our  thinking  by  the  right  path.  For  morality  is  not  the 
mere  keeping  of  a  law ;  it  is  not  the  mere  doing  as  others 
do,  have  done,  and  are  going  still  to  do;  although  without 


CASUISTRY  AND  CONFLICT  OF  DUTIES  433 

consideration  of  custom  and  of  consequences  no  morality 
can  be  attained.  Morality  is  the  achievement  of  the  indi- 
vidual person  who,  by  dutiful  exercise  of  all  his  powers, 
frames  —  each  for  himself  —  an  ideal  of  what,  as  regards 
conduct  and  character,  he  ought  to  do  and  to  be ;  and  who 
by  dutiful  exercise  of  these  same  powers  progressively 
realizes  this  ideal. 

Both  the  moral  ideal,  and  the  virtuousness  which  consists 
in  the  realization  of  it,  are  individual ;  both  the  formation 
of  the  ideal  and  the  realization  of  it  are  progressive,  never 
finished,  always  growing  in  wealth  of  content  and  in  diffi- 
culty of  attainment.  But  neither  ideal  nor  realization  can 
ever  come  into  being  otherwise  than  in  a  social  environment. 
Indeed,  in  their  very  nature  both  ideal  and  its  realization, 
although  individual  and  ceaselessly  variable,  are  also  just 
as  essentially  social.  Conflict  here,  as  through  every  form 
of  life,  is  a  struggle  for  existence.  But  since  virtuous  liv- 
ing is  something  more  than  mere  existence,  or  merely  for- 
tunate existence,  this  struggle  is  of  a  nature  to  involve  all 
the  moral  values.  It  is  a  struggle  to  apprehend,  to  compre- 
hend, and  to  realize  a  Moral  Ideal.  There  is  no  help  for 
it  then ;  every  man  who  desires  to  be  virtuous  must  endure 
this  kind  of  conflict.  His  claim  to  virtue  consists  largely 
in  the  way  in  which  he  conducts  the  conflict. 

This  brief  casuistical  discussion  may  fitly  be  brought  to 
a  close  by  a  few  words  regarding  one  class  of  cases  of  con- 
science which  has  given  the  casuists  of  all  times  no  small 
amount  of  trouble.  These  cases  are  those  in  which  the  duty 
of  truth-telling  comes  into  conflict  with  some  other  form  of 
duty  that  claims  to  be  equally  cardinal,  or  even  more  funda- 
mental. Here  our  view  of  the  nature  of  morality  does  not 
permit  us  either  to  say  with  Kant  that  untruthfulness  is 
always  "  by  its  mere  form,  a  crime  of  man  against  his  own 
person,  and  a  baseness  which  must  make  a  man  despicable 
in  his  own  eyes ; "  or  with  Fichte :  *'  I  would  not  break  my 

28 


434  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

word  even  to  save  humanity;''  but  even  less  to  hold  with 
Paulsen  ^  that  "  veracity  may  be  regarded  as  a  form  of  benev- 
olence "  and  that  lies  may  be  told  with  good  conscience  if 
they  seem  likely,  in  particular  cases,  to  benefit  others.  It 
would  scarcely  seem  necessary  to  controvert  the  extreme 
views  of  Kant  and  Fichte,  in  these  days  when  the  utility  of 
truthfulness  is  so  emphasized  by  most  writers  in  commend- 
ing it  as  a  virtue.  Moreover,  1  have  already  indicated  (p. 
296  f)  in  what  sense  trueness  is  a  cardinal,  an  absolute  virtue, 
—  not  as  the  mere  keeping  of  a  law  but  as  an  act  of  fidelity 
to  the  nature  of  moral  and  rational  selfhood.  Nor  is  it  nec- 
essary to  dwell  long  upon  the  necessity  under  which  Paulsen 
(with  every  other  student  of  ethics  who  does  not  place  this 
virtue  upon  its  own  secure  foundations)  finds  himself  of 
covertly  reintroducing  considerations  which  his  very  concep- 
tion of  the  virtue  has  appeared  openly  to  exclude.  For  if  the 
sole  answer  to  the  question,  Why  is  lying  wrong  ?  is  this : 
Because  it  destroys  faith  and  confidence  among  men,  and 
consequently  undermines  human  social  life,  the  other  ques- 
tion still  recurs:  What  about  human  social  life  is  it  that 
lying  undermines  which  has  the  worth  to  make  the  happiness 
given  by,  and  derived  from,  much  lying,  disapproved  as 
inconsistent  with  the  ideal  of  personal  morality  ?  In  try- 
ing to  answer  this  question  we  actually  find  Paulsen  disap- 
proving, on  the  one  hand,  of  the  theologians  who  deceive 
men  in  the  supposed  interests  of  the  salvation  of  their 
souls,  and  commending  physicians  who  deceive  them  in 
the  interests  of  their  bodily  health  or  of  recovery  from 
disease! 

When  the  conflict  is  on  between  the  duty  of  truth-telling 
and  the  duty  to  exercise  some  contrary  and  opposed  form  of 
virtue,  only  the  individual  whose  conflict  it  is  can  decide 
which  of  the  two  shall  control  his  action.  But  the  conflict 
must  be  fought  out  on  grounds  of  duty,  and  the  eye  must  be 

1  A  System  of  Ethics,  p.  664  f. 


CASUISTRY  AND  CONFLICT  OF   DUTIES  435 

kept  steadily  fixed  on  the  moral  ideal.  Otherwise,  which- 
ever way  this  particular  problem  of  conduct  is  practically 
settled,  duty  is  not  really  done,  and  the  moral  ideal  has  been 
violated.  In  most  cases  it  will  be  found,  I  think,  that  the 
conflict  is  not  between  duties  at  all.  For  example,  if  the 
question  seem  to  be.  Shall  I  tell  the  truth  and  be  unkind  or 
speak  falsely  in  a  benevolent  way  ?  there  are  several  ques- 
tions that  deserve  an  answer  which  lie  still  back  of  this  one. 
Must  I  speak  at  all?  Will  the  truth  be  really  unkind  ? 
Will  the  falsehood  or  deceit  be  really  kind;  and  if  a  kind- 
ness to  this  one  person,  will  it  be  a  kindness  to  society  ? 
And,  indeed,  am  I  bound  to  be  kind  in  this  case,  etc.,  etc.  ? 
He  who  values  trueness  at  its  own  intrinsic  worth,  as 
belonging  to  the  most  essential  qualities  of  rational  and 
moral  personality,  and  as  situate  at  the  very  foundations  of 
all  social  intercourse  of  the  moral  sort  between  selves,  but 
who  has  come  to  the  pass  that  he  must  either  deliberately 
surrender  this  precious  thing  for  only  one  moment  or  else 
do  a  great  wrong  by  way  of  injustice,  unkindness,  or  other 
harmful  conduct  to  his  fellow-men,  is  in  a  hard  case  indeed. 
He  is  in  one  of  those  tragic  situations  for  the  relief  from 
which  no  system  of  casuistical  rules,  and  no  code  of  moral 
principles,  can  amply  provide.  He  must  settle  his  own  case 
of  conscience  as  best  he  can.  But  he  must  settle  it  as  a 
moral  problem  —  keeping  himself  free  from  cowardice,  in- 
justice, enmity,  and  hypocrisy  or  self-deceit.  If  he  thus 
settle  it,  good  men  will  commend  his  devotion  to  his  own 
ideal  of  duty,  and  pardon  and  pity  him  if  he  seems  to  them 
not  to  have  settled  it  aright.  And  what  the  Judge  who 
knows  the  whole  truth  will  cause  to  eventuate  from  this 
human  decision  is  in  this  Judge's  hands.  The  struggle 
itself  has  its  own  value,  although  its  place  in  the  realization 
of  the  Moral  Ideal  may  be  a  mystery  hidden  from  man. 


CHAPTER   XYIII 

THE  GOOD  MAN 

The  previous  discussion  of  the  nature  of  the  Virtuous  Life 
has  prepared  the  way  for  a  correct  and  fairly  complete 
answer  to  the  following  question :  Who  is  the  good  man,  and 
how  shall  we  describe,  so  that  we  may  know  him  ?  This 
answer  must,  however,  always  remain  of  a  rather  general 
sort,  the  details  of  which  have  to  be  filled  in  with  a  variety 
of  contents  dependent  upon  individual  circumstances  and 
upon  the  differences  inherent  in  individual  selves.  More- 
over, the  description  must  employ  terms  of  the  recognized 
virtues  rather  than  the  more  abstract  terms  of  moral  laws 
and  moral  principles.  Thus  we  may  say  without  fear  of 
contradiction  that  the  good  man  is  brave,  temperate,  and 
constant;  he  is  also  wise,  just,  and  true;  and  he  is  not 
lacking  in  kindness  and  sympathy  but,  the  rather,  guides 
himself  in  his  relations  to  others  by  a  principled  and  broad 
benevolence.  In  a  word  the  good  man  is  he  who  realizes  the 
virtuous  life  in  all  his  varying  relations  with  other  men  in 
society.  This  "realizing"  consists  in  the  actual  practice  of 
the  different  virtues,  — the  virtues,  namely,  of  courage,  tem- 
perance, constancy,  wisdom,  justness,  trueness,  kindness, 
sympathy,  and  benevolence, — each  duly  and  in  its  own 
place,  as  occasion  demands  and  as  circumstances  make  pos- 
sible. This  "realizing"  is  not  so  much  the  mental  recogni- 
tion of  a  law,  and  the  patterning  of  conduct  after  the  law,  as 
it  is  the  actual  living  of  a  life  according  to  an  Ideal. 

But  the  ideal  itself,  since  it  is  a  moral  ideal,  appears  as  a 


THE  GOOD  MAN  437 

command  which  elicits  the  feeling  of  obligation  and  which 
gains  respect  for  its  own  sanctions  by  its  own  nature  and 
manner  of  appearance  in  consciousness.  The  good  man  is 
the  man  who  actually  lives  in  the  progressive  realization  of 
the  virtuous  life.  In  other  words,  and  since  every  man  is 
a  concrete  individual,  in  social  relations  with  other  individ- 
uals, the  good  man  conducts  himself  according  to  his  ideal 
of  what  his  Self  ought  to  do  and  be,  in  its  intercourse  with 
other  selves.  Every  piece  of  conduct  which  has  these  char- 
acteristics is  entitled  to  be  called  virtuous,  or  morally  good ; 
every  person  who  habitually  conducts  himself  in  this  way  is 
entitled  to  consider  himself,  and  to  be  considered  by  others, 
as  a  truly  good  man.  And  should  any  mortal  and  finite 
person  succeed  in  doing  this  to  perfection  he  would  be 
entitled  to  be  considered  by  others  an  entirely  good  man. 
As  says  Professor  Laurie i^  "The  Good  Will  is  that  Will 
which  habitually  subsumes  moral  ideas  as  motives  of  its 
willing  or  volition." 

In  order,  however,  to  adapt  this  description  to  the  facts 
of  experience  and  also  to  the  uses  of  the  student  of  ethics, 
whether  from  the  more  purely  speculative  or  the  more  purely 
practical  point  of  view,  it  needs  to  be  modified  and  further 
explained  by  a  series  of  remarks.  These  remarks  are  them- 
selves only  brief  summaries  of  conclusions  which  have  either 
been  definitively  reached  or  less  clearly  indicated  by  the 
previous  discussions  of  the  nature  of  the  Moral  Self  and  of 
the  Virtuous  Life.  Among  them  I  place  first  the  following: 
Morality  does  essentially  consist  in  conduct  shaped  accord- 
ing to  an  ideal ;  but  this  ideal  need  not  be  either  conceived 
in  its  entirety,  or  followed  with  a  full  consciousness  of  its 
significance  and  worth,  or  even  always  followed  with  any 
conscious  recognition  of  it  at  all,  in  order  that  conduct 
may  be  moral. 

That  morality  does  consist  in  conduct  shaped  according 

1  Ethica,  The  Ethics  of  Reason,  p.  21. 


438  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

to  an  ideal  standard,  and  that  moral  judgments  regularly  and 
naturally  bring  all  actual  conduct  into  comparison  with  this 
standard,  has  been  made  increasingly  apparent  by  the  entire 
trend  of  our  discussions.  The  power  to  frame  ideals  by 
joint  activity  of  thought  and  imagination,  and  that  emo- 
tional response  to  the  ideal  which  the  consciousness  of  man 
returns,  are  fundamental  and  universal  conditions  of  all  his 
moral  as  well  as  a3sthetical  development.  He  who  cannot  in 
any  wise  be  induced  to  conceive  of  that  which  is  better  than 
the  actual,  and  to  feel  some  preference  for  this  better,  some 
drawing  or  obligation  to  it,  cannot  be  a  moral  being.  The 
good  man  must  conceive  of  a  Self,  to  make  his  own,  which 
is  morally  superior  to  his  own  present  self;  and  he  must  feel 
the  impulse  and  the  demand  to  realize  that  superior  self. 

At  the  same  time,  for  the  multitude  of  men  in  all  their 
transactions  with  their  fellows,  and  for  the  best  men  in  the 
multitude  of  their  transactions,  the  moral  ideal  is  not 
present  in  consciousness  in  any  distinct,  not  to  say  com- 
plete, form.  With  most  men  and  women  —  even  good  men 
and  women  —  the  daily  and  yearly  round  of  duties  is  filled 
out  with  comparatively  little  conscious  intention  aimed  at 
the  end  of  it  all,  and  with  only  rare  and  fragmentary  pic- 
tures of  the  better  selfhood  which  is  either  being  won  or 
being  lost.  Indeed,  with  the  millions  of  earth  —  and  not 
simply  among  the  savages,  or  in  the  civilizations  of  China 
and  India,  but  as  well  in  Europe  and  America  —  life  is  lived 
with  a  concentration  of  energies  upon  the  problem  of  bare 
existence  which  leaves  little  of  thought,  imagination,  and 
feeling,  for  problems  that  lie  in  any  measure  above,  or  out- 
side of,  hare  existence.  And  yet,  everywhere  that  any  form 
of  social  organization  constitutes  an  environment  for  the 
individual  —  and  man's  environment,  as  moral,  is  neces- 
sarily some  form  of  social  organization  —  the  shadow  of 
some  feature  or  fragment  of  the  moral  ideal  is  constantly 
being  thrown  across  his  path.     His  barest   existence  is  a 


THE  GOOD  MAN  439 

social  affair,  and  to  secure  it  involves  the  practical  solution 
of  questions  of  conscience.  Shall  he  now  be  brave  or  be  a 
coward  ?  Shall  he  in  this  case  indulge  his  anger  and  the 
spirit  of  revenge,  or  control  it?  Shall  he  act  with  fore- 
thought or  let  this  particular  matter  slip  by  without  his 
careful  seizure  of  opportunity  ?  Shall  he  treat  another  in 
this  special  instance  unjustly,  or  allow  himself  to  be  treated 
unjustly  in  case  he  can  avoid  it  by  resistance  or  outcry  ? 
Shall  he  swear  to  his  own  hurt  and  change  not;  or  shall  he 
avoid  the  keeping  of  his  word  ?  Shall  he  be  kind  and  help- 
ful toward  a  fellow,  even  at  the  cost  of  self-sacrifice  ?  In 
the  solution  of  all  these  concrete  questions,  there  is  an 
opportunity  to  exchange  glances  between  the  Self  that  is 
and  the  Self  that  ought  to  be?  The  former  is  very  real  and 
insistent  with  its  appetites,  passions,  and  desires.  But 
then  it  has  its  kindly  and  sympathetic  impulses  as  well. 
And  the  latter,  the  Self  that  ought  to  be,  is  always,  in  re- 
spect of  this  one  piece  of  conduct  in  hand,  or  perhaps  in 
respect  of  the  entire  class  of  actions  to  which  this  action 
belongs,  at  least  somewhat  better  —  ideally  so  —  than  the 
actual  Self.  It  has  certain  appreciable  values,  and  the 
sanctions  that  go  with  these  values,  on  its  side. 

There  are,  moreover,  in  the  very  structure  and  personnel 
of  the  existing  social  organizations  concrete  representations 
of  that  Ideal  Self  which  the  individual  is  obligated  to  realize. 
There  are  the  customs,  laws,  and  institutions,  which  have 
moral  significance  and  which  result  from  the  past  experience 
of  the  race  in  its  own  experimenting  to  find  out  the  right 
ways  of  conduct.  And  there  are  the  older  and  wiser  mem- 
bers of  society,  the  individual  selves  that  are  looked  up  to 
by  the  multitude  as  embodying,  in  some  important  features 
at  least,  the  ideals  of  a  selfhood  which  is  better  than  that 
now  realized  by  the  average  development  of  the  immature 
and  unskilled  multitude.  There  are  the  stories  of  the  heroes 
of  old,  and  of  revered  ancestors,  and  of  the  gods  that  have 


440  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

their  home  on  Olympus  or  dwell  nearer  the  hearts  and 
hearths  of  men.  Thus  the  individual  member  of  the  social 
whole  is  led  to  feel,  in  this  or  that  respect  at  least,  and  here 
in  one  way  and  there  in  another  way,  that  the  selfhood  of 
these  superiors  is  an  example  of  the  Ideal  Self  which  he 
should  make  his  own. 

But  no  matter  how  much  the  individual  may  subordinate 
his  moral  reason  to  the  social  type,  and  in  spite  of  the  lazy 
and  abject  willingness  to  be,  not  simply  no  better  man  than 
the  custom  and  law  demand,  but  even  as  little  of  a  good  man 
as  the  custom  and  law  will  permit,  problems  of  conduct  are 
apt  to  arise  which  make  still  higher  demands  upon  the  joint 
work  of  thought  and  imagination  in  framing  his  moral  ideal. 
Whether  I  will  or  not,  I  must  bQ  my  self.  My  virtuousness 
or  viciousness  must  be,  in  some  respects,  peculiarly  my  own. 
For  the  working  of  the  principle  of  individuality  is  impera- 
tive here.  The  great  majority  of  men  and  women  are 
undoubtedly,  in  such  ideals  of  the  life  that  ought  to  be  as 
they  cherish  at  all,  very  largely,  perhaps  almost  wholly 
alike.  Yet  in  all  countries  and  stages  of  social  evolution, 
good  and  bad  men  are  recognized  as  existing  side  by  side  in 
the  same  social  organization.  And  the  very  words,  "  good  " 
and  "bad,"  indicate  clearly  enough  which  of  the  two  classes 
is  recognized  as  entitled  to  give  the  picture  of  moral  per- 
fection to  the  community  for  their  example  and  imitation. 
There  are  also  some  "  very  good  men  "  in  almost  all  multitu- 
dinous communities.  And  such  is  the  very  nature  of  moral 
goodness,  that  these  leaders  of  the  van  must  have  an  ideal 
for  themselves  to  follow  which  is  raised  by  themselves  con- 
sciously above  the  low  level  of  the  average  morals.  As  to 
the  influence  of  this  ideal  upon  the  moral  development  of 
these  individuals  themselves,  and,  not  infrequently,  through 
them  upon  the  race,  it  is  not  necessary  to  add  to  what  has 
been  already  said. 

Nor  can  this  relation  of  the  ideal  Self  to  the  actual  Self, 


THE  GOOD  MAN  441 

in  the  case  of  all  who  are  entitled  to  be  called  good,  be 
understood  without  taking  into  account  those  psychological 
laws  which  control  all  human  development.  Among  such 
laws  are  chiefly  those  which  enter  into  the  growth  of  habit 
and  which  determine  all  the  immense  influence  of  habit  over 
the  character  and  achievements  of  the  individual.  Repeated 
activities  of  the  order  that  constitutes  good  or  bad  conduct, 
like  all  repetition  of  similar  activities,  tend  to  the  formation 
of  habits.  The  formation  of  habits  is  necessarily  connected 
with  important  changes  in  the  character  of  the  thinking, 
feeling,  and  willing,  which  enter  into  every  single  instance 
of  the  habit.  What  was  formerly  done,  when  the  habit  was 
in  its  earlier  stages  of  formation,  only  with  a  definite  con- 
sciousness of  the  end  to  be  attained  and  of  the  proposed 
method  of  its  accomplishment,  with  more  or  less  of  specially 
appropriate  feelings  or  with  a  certain  conflict  of  feeling  or 
resistance  from  feeling,  and  with  an  appearance  of  deliberate 
willing  and  self-determination,  comes  to  be  done  in  a  seem- 
ingly unintelligent,  non-emotional,  and  automatic  fashion. 
But  the  good  man  morally,  according  to  the  age  and  matur- 
ity of  his  goodness,  is  emphatically  the  man  of  good  moral 
habits.  He  is,  therefore,  good  in  general,  as  a  matter  of 
course.  He  is  habituated  to  follow  a  certain  ideal ;  and  for 
this  very  reason  he,  in  his  habits,  follows  it  actually,  but 
oftenest  without  consciously  setting  it  before  him  as  an 
ideal.  In  the  main  he  has  solved  the  problem  of  conduct 
by  deciding  what  sort  of  a  man  he  ought  to  be ;  and  he  has 
settled  himself  into  an  habitual  but  relatively  unthinking, 
unfeeling,  and  once-for-all  determined  career  in  pursuance 
of  his  ideal.  It  is  chiefly  when  such  an  one  awakes  to  the 
consciousness  of  having  been  unfaithful  in  some  particular 
to  his  standard  of  moral  selfhood,  or  when  some  more  than 
usually  difficult  case  of  casuistry  comes  up  for  a  practical 
decision,  that  he  makes  conscious  reference  to  his  moral 
ideal.     It  is,  as  a  rule,  only  in  a  case  of  doubt,  that  the 


442  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

good  man  inquires:  How,  under  these  particular  circum- 
stances, shall  I  act  in  order  best  to  realize  my  ideal  of  a 
Moral  Self? 

Conduct  is  a  sort  of  high  art;  and  truly  virtuous  living  is 
not  a  theory  to  be  accepted,  but  an  habitual  practice  of  the 
several  virtues  that  flow  from  the  very  nature  of  the  obliga- 
tions of  moral  selves  in  their  reciprocal  relations  as  members 
of  a  social  organization.  Like  all  art  it  recognizes  the  ideal. 
But  its  ideal  is  realized  not  in  idea  merely  or  chiefly,  but  in 
conduct  which  implies  much  more  than  correct  and  exalted 
ideating  activity.  And  like  all  life  the  virtuous  life,  the  life 
of  the  good  man,  is  an  habitual  way  of  living  that  conforms 
to  a  norm  without,  by  any  means,  constantly  holding  that 
norm  before  itself  in  the  mirror  of  consciousness.  Moral 
seZf-consciousness  —  no  matter  of  how  intelligent  and  exalted 
a  type,  and  notwithstanding  the  great  need  of  self-compre- 
hension which  the  noblest  living  requires  —  is  never  the 
chief  end  of  conduct,  or  the  principal  criterion  of  the  moral 
quality  of  conduct. 

Another  remark  necessary  to  characterize  properly  the 
good  man  is,  I  think,  somewhat  like  the  following:  The 
different  degrees  of  moral  goodness  depend,  both  upon  the 
excellence  of  the  moral  ideal  adopted  by  the  individual,  and 
also  upon  the  perfection  with  which  each  individual's  ideal 
is  realized  in  the  actual  conduct  of  life.  That  some  good 
men  are  better  than  others,  and  that  good  men  may  generally 
continue  to  grow  better,  are  propositions  which  only  a  cap- 
tious and  pernicious  metaphysics  or  theology  would  think  of 
disputing.  Most  human  beings  have  some  morally  good 
points  about  them;  even  those  justly  called  bad  men  have 
some  virtues,  some  fragments  or  traces  or  promises  of  moral 
excellence.  Not  infrequently  men  who  are  decidedly  vicious, 
when  their  conduct  is  compared  with  the  standard  set  by 
certain  of  the  cardinal  virtues,  are  conspicuously  good  if 
measured  by  the  standard  of   other  cardinal  virtues.     But 


THE  GOOD  MAN  443 

the  good  man  is  he  whose  ideal,  chosen  and  followed,  is  the 
for  him  virtuous  life;  or,  in  other  words,  he  is  the  man  who 
is  actually  shaping  his  conduct  according  to  the  ideal  of 
manhood  he  believes  he  ought  to  attain.  As  is  the  case  with 
all  other  ideals,  so  with  the  moral  ideal ;  the  different  indi- 
vidual standards  get  compared  with  one  another,  get  tested 
by  the  comparison  which  often  becomes  a  conflict,  get  prefer- 
entially selected  as  the  result  of  such  practical  testing;  and 
gradually,  if  not  suddenly,  in  the  experience  of  the  individ- 
ual and  of  the  race,  the  more  excellent  are  made  plain.  It 
is  not  strange,  then,  that  there  is  much  difference  of  opinion 
among  different  individuals  as  to  the  most  excellent  type 
of  manhood,  morally;  just  as  there  is  much  difference  of 
opinion  concerning  the  ideals  of  the  happy  life,  or  of  any  of 
the  principal  kinds  of  art.  And  every  one  must  "  work  out 
his  own  salvation  "  in  ethical,  as  well  as  in  eudaemonistic  or 
sesthetical  affairs.  For  it  is  the  spirit  working  in  the  man, 
the  spirit  of  devotion  to  the  moral  ideal  and  the  constant 
working  to  realize  it,  which  are  the  chief  distinctions  be- 
tween the  good  and  the  bad. 

Nevertheless,  the  moral  development  of  the  race,  which 
is  in  this  respect  eminently  dependent  upon  its  intellectual 
development  and  upon  its  entire  growth  in  experience,  has 
made  it  possible  in  good  measure  to  adjudicate  between  the 
different  ideals  of  moral  selfhood.  The  influence  of  the 
Christian  religion  has  been  especially  prominent  in  this 
development,  through  the  ideal  of  manhood  which  it  has 
favored  and  established  in  favor  amongst  mankind.  I  can- 
not believe  that  this  ideal  differs,  in  so  far  as  it  is  ethical 
and  not  distinctively  religious,  so  radically  from  the  best 
Greek  conception  as  Paulsen  and  others  would  have  us  to 
suppose.  But  the  description  of  the  ideal  good  man  as  given 
in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  and  as  realized  by  the  preacher 
of  that  Sermon,  with  its  implied  exhortation  to  strive  to  be 
perfect  after  the  pattern  of  the  Divine  Ideal  of  Selfhood,  is 


444  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

undoubtedly  entitled,  even  when  judged  by  the  standards  of 
historical  and  ethnological  and  psychological  criticism,  to 
be  considered  the  most  excellent  of  ideals.  This  ideal, 
however,  cannot  be  adopted  in  a  vague  general  way ;  it  must 
itself  be  individualized  by  every  good  man;  and,  in  its  con- 
crete realization,  it  is  dependent  upon  a  host  of  constantly 
changing  circumstances  connected  with  each  individual's 
social  environment.  It  must  also  be  a  practicable,  a  pro- 
gressively realizable,  ideal.  For  nothing  is  more  destructive 
of  virtuous  living  than  to  make  virtue  consist  in  holding  and 
pursuing  a  type  of  manhood  that  could  not  possibly  maintain 
itself  in  any  existing,  or  even  conceivable,  kind  of  a  social 
organization.  One's  ideal  may  be  —  nay!  should  be  —  as 
high  and  noble  as  the  strenuous  and  persistent  effort  to 
copy  the  godlike  man  can  possibly  raise  it;  but  its  realiz- 
ing is  no  mere  act  of  mental  apprehension;  and  living 
in  accordance  with  the  moral  ideal  can  never  be  a  mere 
copying. 

So,  then,  it  is  not  simply  the  holding  of  the  higher  and 
lower  degrees  of  the  ideal  of  moral  selfhood  which  makes  the 
difference  in  the  goodness  of  different  men;  although  they 
are  the  better  morally,  who,  other  things  being  equal,  have 
espoused  the  best  ideals.  The  "high-flyer,"  the  Idealist  (as 
the  word  is  usually  understood  when  spelled  with  a  capital 
and  applied  to  the  sphere  of  ethics),  is  not  likely  to  be  the 
best  of  good  men.  For  besides  the  general  impracticable 
character  of  the  ideal  he  cherishes,  we  may  havB  to  note  that 
he  is  too  frequently  and  too  contentedly  unfaithful  to  his 
own  ideal.  No  good  man  —  much  more,  no  best  among 
good  men  —  realizes  his  own  ideal  of  a  Moral  Self.  But  any 
man  renders  suspicious,  if  he  does  not  altogether  forfeit,  his 
claim  to  being  a  loyal  follower  of  the  Virtuous  Life,  if  he 
habitually  and  obviously  falls  far  short  of  the  very  elements 
of  the  ideal  which  he  considers  so  strictly  applicable  to  all 
his  fellow-men.     He  may  be  grandly  right,  as  Jesus  was,  in 


THE  GOOD  MAN  446 

leading  a  little  group  of  followers,  or  in  going  alone  to 
martyrdom,  because  the  standard  he  raises  and  would  have 
others  accept  is  so  obviously  contrary  to  the  interests  of  the 
ruling  classes  or  the  impulses  of  the  multitude.  But,  I 
repeat  again  :  Every  moral  ideal  which  is  binding  on  the 
individual  involves  the  conception  of  a  Self  set  into  actual 
relations  with  other  selves,  in  some  existing  social  organiza- 
tion, and  conducting  itself  virtuously  in  those  relations.  The 
most  really  good  man  is,  then,  he  who  in  his  daily  life  habit- 
ually, by  the  employment  of  all  his  energies  of  mind,  heart, 
and  will,  moulds  himself  according  to  that  particular  ideal  of 
morality  which  seems  to  him  most  worthy.  This  ideal  of 
morality  is  always,  on  the  one  hand,  concrete  and  individual ; 
but  it  is  also,  on  the  other  hand,  social  and  having  reference 
to  the  part  which  every  individual  takes  in  the  community 
of  moral  beings. 

Another  remark  —  almost  too  obvious  to  deserve  making, 
were  it  not  for  its  practical  importance,  is  this :  The  good- 
ness of  the  good  man  is  always  a  growth,  both  of  function 
and  of  performance ;  and  this  growth  is  eminently  dependent 
upon  the  development  of  the  ideal  toward  which  the  growth 
is  directed  in  each  individual  case.  Being  good  is  no  gen- 
eral undefined  sort  of  a  thing;  functioning  virtuously  is  not 
an  abstraction.  The  good  man  is  a  good  father,  a  good  son, 
a  good  brother,  and  a  good  citizen  or  member  of  the  particu- 
lar social  organization  in  which  his  daily  life  is  placed; 
and,  as  such  a  good  member  of  society,  he  is  a  good  day- 
laborer,  a  good  shopkeeper,  a  good  teacher,  lawyer,  doctor, 
or  what  not  —  using  the  word  "good"  always  in  its  ethical 
significance.  Into  this  kind  of  moral  goodness  he  must  grow 
by  experience,  just  as  truly  as  into  the  excellent  skill  or 
learned  technique  of  his  particular  calling  or  profession. 
But  back  of,  and  down  below,  all  this  is  the  fact  that  the 
very  functions  in  which  every  form  of  virtuous  living  con- 
sists are  all  subject  to  development. 


446  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

The  more  specific  activities  in  which  the  essential  moral- 
ity of  action  consists  are  apt  to  develop  later  than  those 
necessary  to  the  mere  form  of  the  action  itself.  The  feeling 
of  obligation,  for  example,  is  necessarily  preceded  by  a  con- 
siderable development  of  the  pleasure-pains  and  of  the  lower 
and  less  complex  forms  of  affection  and  emotion.  The 
appreciation  of  the  worth  of  resisting  the  impulse  to  steal 
an  orange  comes  later  than  the  appreciation  of  the  value  of 
the  orange  for  its  pleasure-giving  sensuous  qualities.  It 
requires  more  growth  in  self-determination  to  resist  the 
tendency  to  cowardice  in  consideration  of  motives  presented 
by  the  idea  of  a  virtue  called  courage  than  to  let  one's  self 
be  determined  by  the  struggle  for  supremacy  of  two  con- 
flicting forms  of  fear.  And  the  stage  at  which  intellect  and 
imagination  must  arrive  in  order  to  construct  even  a  rela- 
tively low  type  of  the  Moral  Ideal  is  a  higher  stage  than 
that  which  makes  possible  the  anticipation  of  pleasure  or 
pain  on  account  of  some  imaginary  condition  of  a  physically 
ideal  sort.  Cinderella  and  Blue  Beard,  or  any  of  the  tales 
of  the  Arabian  Nights,  awaken  the  picture-making  faculty 
at  a  much  lower  level  than  that  to  which  the  spiritual  purity 
of  the  Virgin  Mary,  or  the  self-sacrifice  of  her  Son,  the 
Christ,  appeal.  Whoever  throws  himself  wholly  into  the 
arms  of  the  Virtuous  Life,  whoever  makes  his  constant  aim 
the  realizing  of  so  exalted  an  ideal,  must  endure  a  strain 
upon  his  Time-consciousness  and  Self-consciousness,  in  order 
to  find  rational  justification  for  such  a  deed  of  will,  which 
considerably  surpasses  that  required  for  the  mastery  of  the 
higher  matliematics  or  the  physics  of  the  solar  system. 

To  these  less  obvious  considerations  may,  of  course,  be 
added  the  entirely  commonplace  remark  that  growth  in  vir- 
tue comes  only  through  the  practice  of  virtue.  Of  course, 
as  everybody  knows,  the  only  way  to  be  good  is  to  become 
good ;  and  the  only  way  to  become  good  is  to  practise  being 
good. 


THE  GOOD  MAN  447 

Scarcely  less  important  but  much  less  obvious  is  the  truth 
that  the  Ideal  of  conduct  and  character  toward  which  the 
good  man  shapes  his  course,  is  itself  a  matter  of  growth  and 
development.  No  other  forms  of  psychoses  are  so  manifestly 
subjective  as  are  the  ideals  of  men.  Their  perceptions  are 
popularly  thought  of  as  copies  of  somewhat  permanently 
existing  extra-mentsil  realities ;  and  there  is  warrant  for  this 
mistaken  thought  in  the  very  nature  of  the  mental  processes 
which  are  called  perceptions.  So,  too,  are  those  conceptions 
which  are  formed  by  logical  functioning  upon  a  basis  of  con- 
crete experiences  considered  to  have  some  correlate  in  the 
world  of  actual  existences.  But  how  stands  the  case  with 
human  ideals  ?  Are  they  not  mere  dreams  of  what  might  be, 
entirely  unlike  perceptions  and  conceptions  in  that  they  are 
devoid  of  all  correlates  in  Reality  ?  Must  it  not  be  confessed 
of  the  good  man,  as  of  the  Idealist  of  every  sort :  — 

*'  That  type  of  Perfect  in  his  mind 
In  Nature  can  he  nowhere  find, 
He  sows  himself  on  every  wind  ?  '* 

I  am  not  seeking  at  present  the  answer  to  so  vast  and 
difficult  a  question,  although  it  raises  the  ultimate  problem 
of  a  philosophy  of  conduct.  The  existence  of  the  ideals 
which  are  formed  by  the  conscious  activity  of  good  men  is  at 
any  rate  a  fact  of  experience.  Moral  ideas  are  persistently 
recurring  facts,  —  of  such  a  nature,  too,  that  without  them 
and  what  they  imply  as  to  man's  constitution  and  history, 
there  would  be  no  problem  of  conduct  for  ethics  to  try  to 
solve.  And  for  every  individual  his  own  ideal  —  however 
low  and  fragmentary  or  lofty  and  relatively  complete  —  is 
subject  to  change  and  development.  Besides  all  this,  it  is 
truth  of  fact  that  the  good  man  finds  his  ideal  growing  faster 
than  his  own  growth  in  the  ability  to  actualize  it.  To  other 
good  judges  and,  if  he  will  only  be  reasonable  in  judgment, 
to  himself,   he  may  appear  to  be  making  no  inconsiderable 


448  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

advances  in  the  practice  of  the  particular  virtues ;  his  mo- 
tives may  be  growing  purer  and  his  intentions  wiser;  but  at 
the  same  time  he  is  likely  to  seem  further  than  ever  from 
realizing  his  own  ideal.  This  is  because  his  ideal  of  the  Self 
to  which  he  owes  allegiance  has  advanced  faster  than  has 
his  real  Self  in  the  actualization  of  that  ideal.  Hence  the 
beautiful  and  profoundly  true  words  of  Riickert :  — 

Vor  jedem  steht  ein  Bild  des,  das  er  iverden  soil ; 
So  lang  er  das  nicht  ist,  ist  nicht  sein  Friede  veil. 

Doubtless  something  similar,  as  applied  to  the  different 
social  organizations  and  even,  in  a  way,  to  the  entire  race 
must  be  recognized  as  true  to  the  facts  of  history.  Certain 
large  sections  of  mankind  —  notably,  the  Chinese,  for  ex- 
ample —  have  remained  for  centuries  well  satisfied  with  the 
moral  ideal  which  has  "set  the  pace,"  and  marked  out  the 
path,  for  the  people  in  their  ethical  development.  All 
nations  show  their  national  characteristics  respecting  the 
self-satisfaction  of  an  ethical  sort  which  they  habitually  feel. 
But  neither  in  the  case  of  the  multitudes,  nor  in  the  case  of 
individuals,  can  this  satisfaction  with  the  existing  ideal  be 
considered  as  a  sure  sign  of  moral  advancement.  Neither 
for  the  people,  nor  for  the  individual,  is  the  habit  of  patting 
one's  self  upon  the  back  and  congratulating  one's  self  on 
one's  own  virtuousness  a  sure  sign  of  the  real  possession  of  a 
virtuous  character.  A  certain  noble  dissatisfaction  belongs, 
the  rather,  to  the  best  among  individuals  and  among  nations. 
And  at  the  present  time,  the  large  amount  of  pessimism 
current  among  the  most  enlightened  and  conscientious  of  the 
morally  most  progressive  peoples  is,  undoubtedly,  a  sign  of 
two  truths  which  are  seemingly,  but  not  really,  antagonistic. 
First:  The  Moral  Ideals  of  humanity  are  rising,  and  this  is 
the  cause  of  that  noble  dissatisfaction  with  existing  moral 
conditions  which  they  who  do  not  feel,  have  no  right  to  be 
considered  good  men ;  but,  second,  the  actual  conduct  of  men 


THE  GOOD  MAN  449 

is  far  below  their  ideals,  perhaps  farther  below  now  than 
ever  before ;  and  this,  too,  is  the  cause  of  a  sad  but  not  dis- 
couraged dissatisfaction.  The  former  is  a  hopeful  sign,  a 
forerunner  of  a  coming  age  of  ethical  improvement.  The 
latter  may  mean  either  Yes,  or  No,  to  the  question :  Is  the 
world  growing  better  ?  according  to  what  part  of  the  world 
one  regards  and  how  one  estimates  this  "growing  better." 
Everywhere  and  in  all  times,  for  the  individual  and  for 
the  race,  the  growth  of  the  Moral  Ideal  is  an  indispen- 
sable cause  and  accompaniment  of  all  moral  progress. 

And  now  it  would  seem  inevitable  that  every  psychologi- 
cal and  ethnological  discussion  of  ethical  problems  must 
have  a  most  astonishing  conclusion.  And,  indeed,  the 
inevitable  logical  conclusion  of  empirical  ethics  is  most 
astonishing.  For  the  whole  discussion  leads  to  apparent 
practical  contradictions,  if  it  does  not  end  in  confusion. 
Indeed,  if  the  word  were  not  so  certain  to  be  misunderstood 
and  its  implications  abused,  I  should  not  hesitate  to  main- 
tain that  the  psychological  and  ethnological  study  of  the 
problem  of  conduct  ends  in  "  antmomies. "  These  are  not, 
however,  real  metaphysical  antinomies  of  the  Kantian  order, 
because  neither  one  of  the  apparently  contradictory  proposi- 
tions which  compose  them  can,  in  any  case,  be  given  the  form 
of  law  (a  nomos)  that  is  founded  upon  a  truly  scientific  hand- 
ling of  the  facts.  Let  us  say,  then,  that  unless  philosophy 
can  in  some  way  get  behind,  or  underneath,  the  conditions 
in  which  a  descriptive  and  historical  survey  of  the  Moral  Self 
and  the  Virtuous  Life  leave  the  subject,  the  good  man,  when 
he  seeks  in  ethics  a  guide  to  conduct,  is  left  hopelessly 
in  the  dark  as  to  the  real  significance  and  worth  of  the 
Right,  and  hopelessly  at  odds  with  himself,  with  his  fellows, 
with  his  environment,  and  with  the  World  of  Reality. 

I  will  now  briefly  state  several  of  the  principal  forms  of 
conflict,  or  antithetic  situations,  which  have  been  disclosed 
by  the  detailed  study  of  ethical  facts  and  ethical  laws. 

29 


450  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

First,  there  is  the  conflict  between  the  sentient  self  and  the 
moral  self.  Man  is  constituted  so  that  his  pleasure-pains 
have  value  for  him ;  indeed,  it  is  difficult,  if  not  impossible, 
to  conceive  of  any  form  of  conscious  existence  in  which 
pleasure  and  pain  should  not  be  constituents  of,  or  essen- 
tially connected  with,  ideas  of  value.  Conduct,  for  the 
worth  of  its  own  which  it  seems  to  possess,  is  dependent 
in  large  measure  upon  its  concomitant  and  sequent  effects 
in  the  way  of  pleasure  and  pain.  To  be  regardless  of  the 
happiness  of  others,  if  not  of  my  own  happiness,  is  certainly 
immoral.  Justice,  wisdom,  kindness,  sympathy,  and  benev- 
olence, if  not  also  courage  and  truth,  would  have  no  meaning 
in  a  world  composed  of  non-sensitive  beings.  But  man  is 
not  simply  a  sentient  self,  he  is  also  a  moral  self.  And 
whatever  the  most  subtle  and  refined  arguments  of  Hedonism 
or  Utilitarianism  may  have  to  advance,  the  interests  of  the 
two  selves,  or  two  sides  of  the  one  Self,  are  by  no  means 
obviously  identical  throughout.  Indeed,  everything  that 
psychology  and  ethnology  have  had  to  disclose  regarding 
ethical  facts  and  laws  has  gone  to  show  that,  neither  by  the 
individual  nor  by  the  race  have  these  two  classes  of  interests 
been  regarded  as  essentially  and  always  the  same.  On  the 
contrary,  the  history  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race  is 
full  of  conflicts  between  the  two  classes  of  interests.  The 
essential  characteristic  of  the  good  man  has  come  to  be  that 
the  moral  self  shall  largely  triumph  over  the  sentient  self. 
And  yet  the  sentient  self  remains  —  always  an  integral  part 
of  the  moral  self.  Hence  the  conflict  ever  remains ;  it  must 
be  perpetually  renewed  until  some  sort  of  a  reconcilement 
can  be  effected. 

But  the  sentient  self  and  the  moral  self  are  both  perpet- 
ually in  danger  of  developing  an  internal  conflict.  I  take 
pleasure  in  seeing  others  happy;  but  if  I  am  to  have  this 
pleasure  I  must  often  —  perhaps  usually  would  be  the  better 
word  for  most  persons  —  gain  this  pleasure  at  the  expense  of 


THE  GOOD  MAN  451 

other  pleasure.  But  for  the  sentient  self  to  calculate  its 
own  interests  in  terms  of  the  value  of  pleasure-pains  brings 
about  many  a  conflict;  whereas  a  perpetual  calculation  of 
this  kind  is  distinctly  prejudicial  to  all  genuine  morality. 
Again,  if  I  am  to  be  truly  moral,  I  must  often  regard  in 
others  something  much  more  highly  than  their  happiness;  — 
but  frequently  nothing  is  more  disagreeable  for  both  parties 
to  the  transaction  than  for  one  human  being,  no  matter  how 
wisely,  to  undertake  to  improve  another's  character. 

Second :  There  are  almost  unceasing  conflicts  among  the 
virtues  themselves.  All  the  most  cardinal  virtues  have  been 
found  to  be  relative  and  necessary  to  modify  or  supplement 
one  another;  and  yet  it  seems  quite  impossible  to  discover 
any  one  supreme  virtue  entitled  to  absorb  them  all.  Hence 
life  is  full  of  conflicts  of  duties  which  are  as  real  as  any  of 
the  most  intense  but  indubitably  human  experiences  can  be, 
and  which  are  not  to  be  escaped  by  resort  to  abstract  theories 
that  a  'priori  demonstrate  their  impossibility.  And,  besides, 
although  we  refused  on  good  grounds  to  accept  the  common 
division  of  virtues  into  the  self-regarding  and  the  altruistic, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  constant  conflicts  arise  between  a 
dutiful  regard  for  one's  own  interests  and  a  dutiful  regard 
for  the  interests  of  others.  It  is  vain  to  deny  the  fact  of 
these  conflicts ;  it  is  a  kind  of  solemn  mockery  to  offer,  in 
solution  of  the  problem  they  afford,  a  mathematical  theory 
which  regards  the  whole  of  society  as  so  many  in  number, 
"each  to  count  as  one,"  or  any  abstract  conception  of  the 
race  as  a  lump-sum  of  spirits,  so  to  say,  of  which  each  indi- 
vidual forms  only  an  insignificant  portion.  I  may  be  in 
duty  bound  at  one  time  to  consider  myself  as  worth  more 
than  a  hundred  others  of  my  fellow-men ;  at  another  time  I 
may  be  bound  to  sacrifice  my  life  freely  in  the  behalf  of  one 
poor  specimen  of  this  common  humanity. 

Much  as  is  now  being  said  —  some  truth,  some  travesty  of 
truth,  and  some  horrible  falsehood  —  about  the  social  organ- 


452  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

ism  and  its  worth,  etc.,  the  side  of  the  individual's  duty  to 
guard  against  the  encroachments  of  society  his  own  higher 
and  nobler  Self  can  never  be  neglected  without  grave  danger 
to  the  most  fundamental  moral  interests.  The  "  good  few  " 
have  rights ;  and  they  are  bound  to  guard  these  rights  even 
in  the  interests  of  the  few  good.  And  nowadays,  when  the 
popular  sneer  is  so  often  against  those  who  will  not  lower 
their  standard  of  ethical  excellence  in  the  interests  even  of 
society,  the  individual  may  be  compelled  to  stand  alone  with 
God,  as  "  holier "  than  they,  against  the  multitude  of  his 
fellow  men.  No  matter ;  for  the  good  few  always  represent 
the  ultimate  Moral  Ideal  better  than  do  the  majority.  And 
in  this  and  all  kindred  cases,  how  shall  the  good  man  know 
whether,  in  his  supreme  regard  for  his  own  better  Self  and 
for  the  absolutely  Holy  One,  he  is  not  also  acting  in  the  best 
interests  of  society  ?  His  ideal  must  he  his  own  highest  and 
best  Self;  his  ideal  must  he  one  that  is  practicable  in  the 
actual  society  of  which  he  is  one  member.  Will  he  do  harm 
by  opposing  the  majority,  and  perish  for  his  presumption,  or 
lose  all  influence  on  account  of  his  seeming  arrogance  ?  Or 
will  he  succeed  in  doing  something  worth  while  for  other 
men  while  regarding  so  highly  his  own  absolute  standard  ? 
God  knows;  but  who  among  men  can  tell?  The  conflict  is 
inevitable  in  the  good  man's  life;  and  no  form  of  socialistic 
theory,  and  no  amount  of  respect  for  the  rules  and  opinions 
of  society,  or  even  of  more  rational  regard  for  the  higher 
social  interests,  will  enable  him  to  escape  this  conflict.  In- 
deed, the  good  man's  own  high  ideal  of  what  he  himself 
would  be,  constitutes  at  times  an  almost  irresistible  tempta- 
tion to  disrespect  for  the  "herd"  of  men,  with  their  low 
estimate  of  moral  values,  and  their  yet  lower  practice  of 
virtuous  living. 

And,  finally,  there  is  the  eternal  contrast,  which  so  often 
issues  in  conflict,  between  the  actual  realization  and  the 
real  Ideal.     Why  should  the  torment  of  the  ideal  be  so  felt 


THE   GOOD  MAN  463 

by  the  men  who  would  seem  least  to  need  it  ?  Why  should 
the  whole  race  seek  a  moral  good,  which  they  do  not  under- 
stand or  really  appreciate,  but  which  comes  to  them  in  fitful 
glimpses  of  fragmentary  shapes  ? 

"  Heaven  opens  inward,  chasms  yawn, 
Vast  images  in  glimmering  dawn. 
Half  shown,  are  broken  and  withdrawn." 

For  this  ideal  is  not  one  of  bodily  comfort  merely ;  it  is  not 
the  Utopia  where  all  are  rich,  and  healthy,  and  wise  enough 
not  to  desire  more  than  is  necessary  for  a  happy  life.  It  is 
an  ideal  that  takes  conduct  and  character  into  the  account, 
in  such  fashion  as  to  make  its  realization  without  righteous- 
ness intrinsically  absurd.  But  as  material,  and  even  moral 
conditions  go  on  improving,  the  Moral  Ideal  seems  little  or 
no  nearer  realization  under  the  improved  conditions.  For  it 
has  risen  while  the  conditions  have  been  rising;  its  demands, 
therefore,  now  seem  more  difficult  of  fulfilment  than  they 
were  before.  Or,  at  least,  they  would  seem  more  difficult, 
and  even  impossible  of  fulfilment,  were  it  not  for  that  strange 
hopefulness  which  somehow  characterizes  most  of  the  indi- 
viduals and  the  peoples  who  are  most  bent  on  setting  moral 
principles  into  realization  as  a  practical  affair. 

Such  conflicts  as  these  lie  athwart  the  path  of  the  good 
man  —  the  more  frequent  and  intense,  the  higher  his  ideal 
and  the  broader  and  more  influential  upon  society  his  sphere 
of  action  —  in  his  effort  to  lead  the  life  of  perfectly  virtuous 
conduct  under  existing  natural  and  social  conditions.  Such 
difficult  questions  of  a  practical  character  come  before  him 
for  solution  by  his  moral  tact.  The  attempt  at  a  theoretical 
treatment  of  these  ethical  antinomies  (?),  and  of  the  prob- 
lems which  grow  out  of  them,  is  the  task  of  speculative  ethics 
in  the  form  in  which  we  now  turn  to  it  our  attention. 


PAKT  THIED 
THE  NATURE    OP  THE  EIGHT 


'''■From  Thee  all  things  come;  in   Thee  all  things  subsist;  to  Thee  all 
things  return.     And  so  I  say  of  the   World:  Dear  City  of  God." 

Marcus  Aurelius. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THE   ULTIMATE  PROBLEM 

We  enter  upon  this  final  stage  of  the  investigation  of  topics 
in  ethics  with  a  number  of  questions  still  unanswered  which 
appear  to  be  of  the  most  important  theoretical,  if  nut  practical, 
character.  It  would  seem  highly  desirable  to  gather  these 
questions  together  and  to  give  them  a  sort  of  unity,  which 
may  serve  as  a  guide  and  a  goal  to  further  investigation. 
Can  the  problems  which  an  empirical  ethics  leaves  unsolved 
be  so  stated  as  at  least  to  constitute  the  terms  of  an  ultimate 
problem  in  the  philosophy  of  conduct  ?  And  if  such  a  state- 
ment be  found  possible,  what  method  of  research  may  be  most 
hopefully  employed  in  the  effort  to  find  a  tentative  and  fairly 
satisfactory  solution  of  this  ultimate  problem,  — "  tentative 
and  fairly  satisfactory,' '  I  say.  For,  if  biology  is  constantly 
finding  the  lower  life,  with  all  that  it  implicates  as  to  its 
origin,  laws,  and  destiny,  more  and  more  of  a  mystery,  and 
the  wonderful  array  of  new  facts  is  so  far  outstripping  the 
utmost  energies  of  science  in  its  effort  to  give  the  facts  a 
complete  explanation,  it  is  small  wonder  if  the  higher  life  of  the 
Moral  Self,  and  the  evolution  of  morality  in  the  race  is  found 
to  be  equally  mysterious.  If  the  biologist  or  anthropologist 
confesses  with  becoming  modesty  his  inability  to  deal  with  the 
origin  and  nature  of  physical  life,  no  student  of  ethics  need 
be  over-confident  in  his  attack  upon  the  ethical  problem,  or 
scorn  and  underestimate  the  help  which  metaphysics  and 
religion  have  to  offer.  For,  indeed,  biology,  psychology,  and 
anthropology,  by  their  combined  efforts,  seem  scarcely  com- 


458  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

petent  much  to  illumine  this  ultimate  problem.  Indeed,  we 
shall  soon  see  that  our  only  hopeful  resource  is  to  metaphysics 
and  to  religion. 

In  this  chapter  I  shall  make  the  attempt  simply  to  state  the 
ultimate  problem  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct,  and  briefly  to 
describe  the  means  which  offer  themselves  for  its  best  pos- 
sible solution.  In  a  word,  the  ultimate  problem  of  ethics  con- 
cerns the  essential  and  permanent  relations  in  which  the 
ethical  life  and  ethical  development  of  the  individual  man  and 
of  the  human  race  stands  to  Reality ;  and  the  conception  of 
reality  here  referred  to  must  be  the  most  comprehensive  and 
ultimate  which  it  is  possible  for  philosophy  to  construct. 
The  method  of  investigating  these  relations  must  be  that 
method  of  reflective  thinking  upon  a  basis  of  all  the  data  of 
experience  concerning  which  philosophy  uniformly  employs, 
and  in  which,  indeed,  philosophizing  essentially  consists.  In 
this  particular  case  it  will  be  found,  I  believe,  that  those  data 
which  are  gathered  from  all  the  ideals  of  man  and  especially 
from  his  religious  nature,  must  be  chiefly  taken  into  the  account. 
In  a  word,  then,  only  general  philosophy  borrowing  largely 
from  the  philosophy  of  religion  can  give  any,  even  tentative 
and  fairly  satisfactory  solution  of  the  ultimate  problem  of 
ethics.  A  few  words  of  explanation  regarding  each  of  these 
two  claims  will  suffice  the  purposes  of  this  introductory  chapter. 
Their  justification  is  the  task  attempted  in  the  entire  Third  Part 
of  the  book. 

When  I  say  that  the  ultimate  problem  of  ethics  concerns 
the  essential  and  permanent  relations  of  human  morality  to 
Reality,  I  am  using  the  latter  term  in  no  empty  or  abstract 
way.  Above  all  must  the  mistake  be  avoided  of  setting  the 
conception  of  reality  over  against  the  actual  and  historical 
development  of  man  in  its  moral  aspect,  or  of  excluding  from 
the  conception  this  moral  development  itself.  Indeed,  the 
central  and  essential  permanent  reality  in  ethics  is  this  same 
actual  moral  life  and  moral  development.     The  progressive 


THE  ULTIMATE  PKOBLEM  459 

ethical  life  of  man  is  the  reality  whose  psychological  charac- 
teristics and  historical  career  form  the  subject-matter  of 
ethics.  This  life  is  real ;  and  it  does  not  borrow,  or  need  in 
order  to  be  real,  a  reality  outside  of  itself. 

The  fact  that  the  Ethical  Life  of  Humanity  is  really  a  suc- 
cession of  psychoses,  and  so,  from  the  psychological  point  of 
view,  a  subjective  affair,  does  not  render  it  less  real.  Indeed, 
what  kind  of  reality  but  a  subjective  and  spiritual  reality  could 
morality  possibly  have  ?  The  dreamer,  the  student  of  the  phe- 
nomena who  is  guilty  of  useless  and  unmeaning  abstractions,  is 
not  the  thinker  who  conceives  of  ethics  as  really  an  affair  of  the 
mutually  dependent  conscious  states  of  selves  ;  he  is  rather  the 
so-called  "  scientist "  who  considers  morality  to  be  really  an 
affair  of  external  customs  and  institutions,  or  even  an  affair 
of  stone,  bronze,  iron,  and  steel,  of  clubs,  spears,  cross-bows, 
and  ironclads.  That  vague  conception  which  anthropology 
dubs  by  the  title  "  civilization,"  and  which  it  is  accustomed 
to  describe  as  chiefly  made  up  of  things  visible  and  tangible, 
is  undoubtedly  both  cause  and  effect  of  the  ethical  evolution 
of  the  race.  But  civilization  itself  is  chiefly  —  at  any  rate,  in 
its  highest  and  most  important  factors  —  an  habitual  manner 
of  the  intercourse  of  selves  with  one  another,  and  of  their 
construction  and  use  of  those  means  for  such  intercourse 
which  have  been  put  at  the  disposal  of  the  present  generation 
by  the  achievements  of  past  generations.  Now  it  is  just  in 
this  social  intercourse  that  we  have  found  the  sphere  of 
morality  to  lie ;  for  morality  is  essentially  an  actual  con- 
scious life  of  the  Moral  Self  in  social  relations  with  other 
moral  selves. 

But  the  reality  of  the  actual  moral  life  which  history  dis- 
closes, whether  of  the  individual  or  of  the  race,  is  not  the 
whole  of  Reality.  Looking  backward  and  outward,  if  not 
looking  inward  and  forward  (although  I  believe  we  shall 
have  to  cancel  this  "if  not"  too),  the  history  of  man's 
moral  life  is  not  the  Ultimate  Reality.     Such  a  declaration 


460  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

is  certainly  true  of  the  individual  Moral  Self.  Character  and 
conduct  we  have  agreed  to  leave  subject  to  the  self-determina- 
tion of  the  individual  in  a  limited  way.  But  the  ethical  con- 
stitution which  makes  the  conducting  of  himself  and  the 
acquirement  of  character  possible  for  the  individual,  and 
makes  possible  as  well  the  social  and  physical  environment 
in  which  his  moral  life  is  begun,  do  not  originate  with  the 
individual.  All  these  he  receives  as  a  dependent  member  of 
the  race.  The  race  itself,  however,  cannot  be  conceived  of  as 
carrying  in  its  life  history  the  whole  of  that  reality  on  which 
this  history  is  dependent.  However  we  may  work  out  our 
problem  of  the  descriptive  history  of  man's  moral  evolution, 
we  come  to  a  theoretical  beginning  when  this  history  is  de- 
pendent for  its  institution  upon  realities  that  lie  beyond 
itself.  Let  it  be  atoms,  ape,  or  (pardon  the  seeming  irrev- 
erence !)  God,  the  case  for  philosophy  is  not  essentially 
changed.  The  Reality,  which  is  from  the  point  of  view  of 
time-consciousness  more  Ultimate,  must  be  thought  of  as 
containing  within  itself  the  potentiality  of  all  the  surprising 
moral  evolution  of  mankind.  The  origins  of  that  reality 
which  is  the  actual  moral  life  of  the  race  must  either  be  left 
in  mid-air,  or  found  in  the  atoms  and  the  lower  animals,  or 
credited  to  the  Absolute  Self.  For  this  real  life  is  a  part 
of  the  larger  Life ;  this  reality  of  man's  moral  life  and  moral 
development  begins  in,  and  is  encompassed  by,  a  larger  Reality. 
Nor  do  I  believe  that  it  is  necessary  to  follow  the  dull, 
mechanical  "  rattling  of  the  chain  of  causation,"  physical  and 
biological,  back  in  imagination  to  the  beginning  of  things, 
in  order  to  feel  the  imperative,  the  supreme  need  of  ground- 
ing one's  ethical  theory  in  a  certain  conception  of  Ultimate 
Reality.  It  is  confessedly  an  impossibl-e  kind  of  a  task  to  try 
to  discover  the  satisfactory  reasons  for  a  feeling  of  obligation, 
and  for  a  judgment  that  bears  in  itself  a  claim  to  authority 
and  to  incontestible  sanctions,  as  a  part  of  the  most  ultimate 
conceivable  knowledge  (if  we  had  or  could  ever  hope  to  have 


THE  ULTIMATE   PKOBLEM  461 

such  knowledge)  of  the  nature  and  laws  of  physical  existence. 
Nor  do  I  see  how  the  difficulty  of  the  task  is  lessened  by  put- 
ting in  between  ourselves  and  the  material  elements  countless 
generations  of  animals  with  pleasure-pains  resembling  ours ; 
albeit  with  more  or  less  likeness  of  appetites,  impulses, 
desires,  and  social  interests,  besides.  But  whether  the  holy 
light  which  surrounds  the  sanctions  of  the  Moral  Ideal  began 
in  a  twilight  that  was  indistinguishable  at  first  from  the 
darkness  in  which  all  things  are  black,  or  struck  into  the 
world  of  real  experiences  at  some  instant  like  a  faint  flash 
of  lightning,  the  ultimate  problem  of  ethics  remains  un- 
chanored.  How  shall  the  world  of  moral  life  —  human  or 
animal  —  be  accounted  for  as  a  dependent  part  of  the  world 
of  Reality  ?  This  moral  life  is  an  actual  psychological  and 
historical  development.  How  shall  it  best  be  interpreted  and 
explained  in  its  relations  to  the  Totality  of  which  it  is  an 
undoubted  part? 

Inasmuch  also  as  this  moral  development,  like  every  other 
development,  looks  forward  as  well  as  backward,  and  raises 
problems  as  to  its  goal,  as  well  as  problems  as  to  its  origins, 
ethics  cannot  avoid  questions  of  the  destiny  of  the  individ- 
ual and  of  the  race,  if  it  wishes  to  treat  satisfactorily  its 
own  ultimate  problem.  All  explanation  is  teleological  and 
has  reference  to  an  end  to  be  realized.  Especially  and  most 
obviously  true  is  this  of  the  phenomena  with  which  ethics 
deals.  Its  end  to  be  realized  is  a  form  of  the  Good,  which  is 
most  intimately  related  in  all  the  systems  of  interconnected 
real  existences  and  actual  events  with  every  form  of  good 
realizable  by  man :  and  yet  the  ethical  good  seems  to  have 
its  special  characteristics  and  its  own  conditions  and  laws  of 
realization.  How  then  can  ethics  solve  its  most  fundamental 
problems  in  a  satisfactory  way  unless  it  consider  the  ends  that 
are  sought,  attainable,  and  actually  attained,  by  human  con- 
duct. And  here  what  is  true  of  the  individual  in  the  small  is 
true  of  the  race  in  the  large.    It  is  impossible  to  explain  the 


462  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

ethical  meaning  and  the  forward-running  effect  of  the  good  or 
bad  conduct  of  the  individual  without  reference  to  the  relations 
of  the  individual  to  the  future  generations  of  men.  Yet  to  jus- 
tify the  individual,  from  the  point  of  view  of  moral  reason,  in 
sinking  his  own  immediate  and  more  pressing  interests  in  the 
future  welfare  of  others,  some  sort  of  an  appeal  must  certainly 
be  made  to  a  teleology  which  rises  to  a  higher  plane  than  that 
upon  which  stands  the  merely  sentient  nature  of  man.  Besides 
all  this,  moral  reason  demands  that  one  should  raise  some 
such  question  as  the  following :  What  sort  of  good  for  others 
in  the  future  am  I  bound  to  seek,  or  even  justified  in  seeking, 
at  the  expense  of  good  to  myself  ?  And  what  picture  shall  I 
frame  of  that  Ultimate  Good,  for  myself,  or  for  others,  or  for 
all,  that  will  connect  the  entire  moral  evolution  of  mankind 
with  the  unceasing  and  universal  ongoing  of  the  World  of 
Reality  ?  Or  must  one  leave  both  ends,  the  origin  and  the 
goal,  as  well  as  all  that  is  most  interior,  of  the  moral  evolution 
of  man  in  the  darkness  of  doubt  and  nescience  ?  Must  the 
philosophy  of  conduct  end  with  this  confession  ?  — 

"  There  was  the  door  to  which  T  found  no  key, 
There  was  the  veil  through  which  I  could  not  see, 
Some  little  talk  there  was  awhile  of  Me  and  Thee, 
And  then  no  more  of  Thee  or  Me.*' 

But  since  the  essential  thing  about  morality  is  its  peculiar 
judgments  of  worth,  and  the  way  these  judgments  arise,  assume 
a  position  of  command,  and  define  for  the  Moral  Self  the  course 
and  final  purpose  of  the  Virtuous  Life ;  and  since  such  judg- 
ments radiate  from,  or  concentrate  themselves  upon  a  certain 
Moral  Ideal  —  the  truly  right  conduct  of  personality  as  a  mem- 
ber of  a  social  organization  —  the  ultimate  problem  of  the  phil- 
osophy of  conduct  may  be  said  to  concern  the  origin,  sanctions, 
and  teleological  justification  of  this  ideal.  This  is,  however, 
to  say  that  some  rational  and  eternal  relation  must  be  estab- 
lished between  the  Moral  Ideal  and  the   Ultimate  Reality. 


THE  ULTIMATE  PKOBLEM  468 

Put  in  the  form  of  a  question,  the  ultimate  problem  of  ethics 
reads  as  follows :  May  that  Being  whom  philosophy  knows  as 
the  Absolute  or  the  World- Ground  be  so  conceived  of  as  to 
afford  the  source,  the  sanctions,  and  the  end  of  Morality  ?  Or, 
more  briefly,  how  shall  the  Moral  Ideal  be  so  united  with  the 
Ultimate  Reality  as  to  find  in  it  its  Ground  ?  The  same 
problem  which  the  metaphysics  of  ethics  proposes  in  this  way, 
religion  solves  by  affirming  God  to  be  the  source,  the  judge 
and  defender,  the  goal  and  guaranty,  of  that  virtuous  living 
which  has  for  its  aim  the  realization  by  moral  selves  of  the 
moral  ideal. 

Surely  the  answers  to  such  questions  as  these  constitute  an 
important  problem  for  the  student  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct. 
And  whoever  carries  on  his  study  of  this  branch  of  philoso- 
phy with  the  moral  earnestness  and  scientific  thoroughness 
which  befit  the  theme  cannot  consent  to  be  satisfied  with 
that  state  of  practical  antinomies  and  consequent  theoretical 
agnosticism  in  which  psychological  and  anthropological  ethics 
inevitably  leave  the  mind.  Above  all  other  forms  of  life  the 
moral  life  should  serve  to  impart  a  desirable  unity  to  exper- 
ience. To  have  either  the  theoretical  consideration  of  moral 
principles  or  the  honest  attempt  to  set  them  into  practice 
result  in  a  permanent  and  hopeless  schism  in  human  nature 
would  be  a  discouraging  and  sad  result  indeed. 

By  what  method,  then,  may  one  most  hopefully  proceed  in 
the  further  treatment  of  this  so-called  ultimate  problem  of 
ethics  ?  The  very  nature  of  the  questions  which  combine  to 
constitute  the  problem  suggests  the  method.  The  questions 
have  to  do  with  the  evolution  of  moral  selves  in  their  natural 
and  necessary  relations  with  one  another,  under  the  different 
forms  of  social  organization.  Whence  does  the  moral  life 
come?  Whither  does  the  moral  life  tend?  Wliat  sort  of 
real  world  must  that  be  in  which  such  a  striving  after  an 
ideal  good  has  its  so  important  and  essential  place  ?  And 
what,  as  further  described  or  defined,  is  the  larger  nature  of 


464  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

that  ideal,  the  Ultimate  Moral  Ideal  toward  which  the  moral 
evolution  of  the  race  is  on  its  way?  These  questions  con- 
cern the  origins,  the  authority  and  sanctions  of  the  regulat- 
ing laws,  and  the  destiny  of  man's  ethico-social  development. 
Their  answer  requires  such  a  conception  of  Reality  as  fur* 
nishes  to  reason  the  most  satisfactory  form  of  knowledge 
—  or,  if  knowledge  be  impossible,  the  most  rational  form 
of  belief  —  respecting  this  development.  These  are  ques- 
tions of  general  philosophy,  and  especially  of  the  philosophy 
of  religion ;  and  they  must  be  attempted  by  the  method 
which  is  legitimate  to  philosophy.  This  is  the  method  of 
reflective  thinking  upon  the  broadest  possible  basis  of  experi- 
ence as  scientifically  construed. 

The  different  so-called  "  schools  of  ethics  "  have  from  time 
immemorial  dealt  with  one  or  more  of  the  features  of  the 
more  comprehensive  problems  of  human  conduct.  Some  of 
them  have  attempted  simply  to  confine  their  consideration  to 
what  experience  tells  us  concerning  the  ethical  development 
of  the  individual,  or  of  the  race ;  they  have  been  satisfied 
with  such  a  descriptive  history  as  could  be  told  in  terms  of 
fact.  With  them  the  most  important  inquiry  has  been, 
whether  liappiness  is  the  one  form  of  good  that  must  be 
sought  by  human  conduct  in  accordance  with  the  constitu- 
tion of  human  nature  and  its  conscious  reactions  upon  its 
environment ;  or  whether  virtuous  conduct  should  be  sought 
as  having  a  worth  of  its  own.  But  this  is  chiefly  a  psycho- 
logical question ;  and  it  should  never  be  confused  with  the 
more  ultimate  metaphysical  problems  which  psychology  and 
anthropology  leave  unsolved. 

A  genuine  and  comprehensive  metaphysics  of  ethics  seeks 
to  ground  in  Reality  a  rational  basis  for  the  origins,  sanc- 
tions, and  results  of  conduct  and  of  moral  development.  It  is 
this  in  which  even  the  multitudes  of  common  men  are  truly 
interested.  For  them  the  disputes  between  Utilitarians  and 
Intuitionists  are  matters  of  merely   academic  concernment. 


THE  ULTIMATE  PROBLEM  465 

They  recognize  the  truths  to  which  both  appeal ;  and  they 
can  detect  those  misses  of  the  truth  of  which  each  school 
justly  accuses  the  other.  What  they  most  want  to  know 
about,  however  —  or,  at  least,  to  have  some  opinion  or  faith 
about  —  are  such  problems  as  these :  Is  the  world  a  moral 
order,  or  a  machine  driven  onward  by  blind  forces,  and  blind 
to  its  own  fate  ?  Whence  come  the  sanctions  of  the  so-called 
moral  laws,  and  who  is  going  to  enforce,  those  sanctions,  if  I 
can  manage  to  disobey  and  to  escape  my  fellow  men,  or  even 
to  profit  by  disobedience  ?  Who  but  a  lot  of  impracticable 
theorists  issues  the  demand  that  I  shall  do  what  I  do  not 
want  to  do  ?  And,  what  is  going  to  come  of  it,  any  way, 
in  the  long  run,  in  the  far-away  future,  for  me  and  for  the  race  ? 
But  these  are  the  questions  of  a  metaphysics  that  must  pay 
regard  not  simply  to  the  physical  and  natural,  or  to  the  psycho- 
logical sciences,  but  also  and  chiefly  to  the  faiths,  fears,  and 
hopes,  of  the  religious  nature  of  man.  They  are  proposals  to 
extend  that  essential,  rational,  and  inevitable  anthropomorph- 
ism, on  which  all  scientific  knowledge  of  the  World  is  based,^ 
over  into  the  sphere  of  ethics  and  religion,  with  a  view 
to  unify  one's  entire  working  theory  of  nature  and  of  human 
life.  That  is  to  say,  they  are  inquiries  as  to  whether  what 
psychology  and  anthropology  fail  to  do  for  ethics  and  re- 
ligion, the  spheres  in  which  man's  realest  interests  move, 
cannot  be  accomplished  in  some  other  way?  The  popular 
demand  is  for  a  view  of  man's  origin,  nature,  and  destiny, 
which  will  do  something  worth  while  in  the  way  of  bridging 
the  chasm  between  truths  of  fact  and  those  ideals  that  seem 
to  have  an  absolute  worth. 

And  the  people  are  right  —  and  by  "  right,'*  I  mean  both 
rational  and  ethically  justifiable  —  in  making  this  demand. 
Moreover,  no  matter  how  much  of  studied  effort  the  schools 
of  ethical  theory  may  make  to  keep  their  contentions  clear 

1  For  the  proof  in  extenso  of  this,  see  my  Philosophy  of  Knowledge,  and 
A  Theory  of  Reality,  throughout. 

30 


466  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

of  general  pliilosophy,  and  of  those  problems  with  which  the 
philosophy  of  religion  concerns  itself,  they  never  succeed 
in  doing  this.  Some  view  as  to  the  nature  of  the  Absolute, 
and  as  to  the  relations  toward  the  Ultimate  Reality  in  which 
the  moral  life  of  man  stands,  as  respects  its  origins,  laws, 
development,  and  destiny,  every  theoretical  treatment  of  ethi- 
cal problems  must  either  explicitly  avow  or  implicitly  involve. 
While,  then,  I  shall  make  no  pretence  of  an  effort  to  avoid 
the  discussion  of  topics  which  compel  one  to  go  beyond  where 
ethics,  empirically  considered,  would  counsel  one  to  stop,  I 
shall  take  the  path  to  this  discussion  which  lies  through  a 
criticism  of  the  different  schools  of  ethical  theory.  To 
classify  these  schools  at  all  strictly  is  impossible ;  their  points 
of  agreement  and  of  disagreement  are  nowadays  too  numer- 
ous, and  the  paths  that  connect  or  diverge  from  them  are 
too  complex  for  a  strict  classification.  For  purposes  of  con- 
venience they  will  be  considered  under  three  classes, — 
namely,  Utilitarianism  in  Ethics,  Legalism  in  Ethics,  and 
Idealism  in  Ethics.  The  criticism  of  these  schools  and  the 
establishing  of  my  own  conclusions  positively  will  compel  me 
to  borrow  —  often  without  calling  attention  to  it  —  much 
from  what  seem  to  me  truths  of  general  philosophy ;  as  well 
as  to  anticipate  some  things  which  a  detailed  treatment  of 
-Esthetics,  but  more  especially  of  the  Philosophy  of  Religion, 
would  be  necessary  to  establish. 


CHAPTER  XX 

UTILITARIANISM   IN  ETHICS 

The  modern  ethical  theories  which  go  by  the  name  of 
"Utilitarian"  differ  from  the  ancient  Hedonistic  theories, 
whose  descendants  they  are,  in  two  or  three  important  par- 
ticulars. Of  these  the  most  important,  perhaps,  consists  in 
the  modification  which  they  have  received  from  their  con- 
nection with  modern  views  as  to  biological  evolution,  and 
from  the  application  of  the  principles  of  such  evolution  to 
the  phenomena  of  human  life.  But,  as  will  apj^ear  in  the 
course  of  discussion,  whatever  light  of  truth  the  biological 
doctrine  of  evolution  can  throw  upon  man's  ethical  develop- 
ment is  really  no  more  favorable  to  the  hedonistic  elements 
of  Utilitarianism  in  Ethics  than  to  other  distinctly  antithetic 
forms  of  ethical  theory.  Indeed,  writers  who,  like  Mr. 
Herbert  Spencer,  insist  most  strenuously  upon  a  close 
amalgamation  of  Utilitarianism  and  Evolution  often  seem 
singularly  deficient  as  to  insight  into  the  real  difficulties  of 
the  problem  they  are  trying  to  solve. 

Modern  Utilitarianism  also  differs  from  both  ancient  and 
more  recent  Hedonism  as  respects  the  way  in  which  it  is 
accustomed  to  construe  such  conceptions  as  pleasure,  happi- 
ness, the  good,  etc.  And  this  difference  is  largely  due  to  a 
historical  growth  in  the  complex  conditions  of  what  men 
generally  regard  as  necessary  for  comfortable  and  happy 
living,  or  even  for  an  existence  that  is  deemed  barely  tol- 
erable. Here  again,  however,  there  is  not  infrequently 
apparent  an  increase  of  confusion,  rather  than  of  clearness, 


468  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

in  the  psychology  of  pleasure-pain  states  (or  of  happiness  in 
general  and  in  particular),  which  grows  out  of  a  failure  to 
seize  and  hold  fast  the  permanent  elements  that  enter  into 
a  problem  of  so  much  complexity.  The  relatively  large  im- 
portance and  range  given  by  the  current  Utilitarianism  to 
those  virtues  of  feeling  so-called,  which  have  a  peculiar 
relation  to  human  pleasure-pains  —  such  as  kindness,  pity, 
sympathy,  etc. — may  be  said  further  to  characterize  certain 
changes  in  the  prevalent  ethical  opinion. 

But  in  spite  of  these  important  differences,  and  of  all  the 
conceivable  as  well  as  actual  minor  differences,  the  essential 
contentions  of  a  certain  school  of  ethics  have  remained 
unchanged  throughout.  I  have  given  to  this  school  the  name 
"Utilitarian"  rather  than  "Hedonistic,"  because  the  former 
term  seems  better  adapted  to  include  the  latter,  than  does 
the  latter  to  include  it ;  moreover,  there  are  some  writers  of 
this  school  who  object  to  being  called  Hedonists,  —  as  though 
something  not  so  excellent  ethically  were  implied  in  this 
word.i  But  Hedonists,  Utilitarians,  and  certain  writers 
who  adopt  still  different  terms  for  their  theories,  hold  essen- 
tially the  same  view  respecting  the  answer  to  that  ultimate 
problem  which  it  is  proposed  now  to  discuss.  They  hold 
that  the  life  of  man,  whether  of  the  individual  or  of  the  race, 
is  an  end  in  itself ;  and  that  its  own  happiness  is  its  final 
and  all-inclusive  end.  In  a  word,  they  all  maintain  that  the 
criterion,  the  sanctions,  and  the  rational  end  of  conduct  and 
of  character  are  to  be  found  in  human  happiness.  From  this 
conclusion  it  follows,  first,  that  the  reason  which  entitles 
any  particular  kind  of  conduct  or  type  of  character  to  be 
called  morally  good  (virtuous)  must  be  found  in  its  useful- 

1  Professor  Watson  is  undoubtedly  true  to  the  facts  of  history  when,  in  his 
treatment  of  "Hedonistic  Theories,"  he  includes  J.  S.  Mill  and  Spencer  with 
Epicurus,  Hobbes,  Locke,  Hume,  and  Bentham;  while  Thilly  (Introduction  to 
Ethics,  p.  72  f,),  in  grouping  together  writers  who  accept  some  form  of  the  Evolu- 
tionary Theory,  has  included  with  Spencer,  Leslie  Stephen,  and  von  Gizycki,  those 
who  differ  so  widely  from  them  as  Wundt,  Simmel,  and  Alexander. 


UTILITAKIANISM  IN  ETHICS  469 

ness  as  a  means  to  happiness;  second,  that  the  obligation 
to  right  conduct  depends  upon  its  utility  as  productive  of 
happiness;  and,  third,  that  the  rational  ideal,  set  up  and 
striven  for  by  the  individual  and  by  the  race,  is  the  utmost 
possible  of  happiness.  In  a  word,  moral  good  is  instru-  . 
mental ;  it  is  good  because  it  is  of  utility  toward  the  attain-  ' 
ment  of  other  good. 

To  the  student  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct,  who  traces 
the  history  of  the  utilitarian  view,  the  cardinal  and  decisive 
importance  which  belongs  in  its  arguments  to  the  conception 
of  happiness  is  the  most  impressive  phenomenon.  But  no 
other  point  in  psychology,  whether  popular  or  scientific,  has 
been  left  after  so  much  discussion  in  a  state  so  indefinite, 
so  unsuitable  to  serve  as  the  basis  of  a  theory,  as  the  concep- 
tion of  happiness.  Indeed,  I  am  inclined  to  doubt  whether 
the  academic  notions  which  are  generalized  under  this  term 
have  not  often  stood  for  experiences  which  mankind  can 
scarcely  recognize  as  having  any  considerable  influence  upon 
their  actual  lives.  It  is  true  that  as  a  stricter  psychological 
theory  of  human  pleasure-pains  has  gradually  been  evolved, 
and  has  come  to  be  more  insisted  upon  by  those  critically 
disposed  toward  all  ethical  theories,  a  certain  tendency 
toward  general  agreement  has  appeared.  Thus,  to  quote 
from  Paulsen,!  "In  his  Ethics  Gizycki  modifies  the  hedon- 
istic theory  as  follows :  The  highest  subjective  goal  of  life, 
he  says,  is  the  satisfaction  produced  by  the  consciousness  of 
having  done  the  right,  or  the  feeling  of  a  good  conscience. 
Doring  agrees  with  him  when,  in  his  Gilterlehre,  he  defines 
the  highest  good  as  the  proper  regard  for  self,  or  the  satis- 
faction of  the  desire  for  individual  worth.  —  We  see  thus 
that  the  difference  between  the  various  conceptions  of  moral- 
ity may  be  practically  insignificant  or  may  entirely  vanish. 
The  question  is  a  purely  theoretical  one. "  What  we  do  see 
is,  the  rather,  that  practically  significant  and  theoretically 

1  A  System  of  Ethics,  p.  286. 


470  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

important  questions  in  ethics  may  be  handled  with  so  much 
lack  of  psychological  analysis,  and  so  much  confusion  of 
terms,  as  to  identify  things  essentially  different,  and  make 
imposing  distinctions  in  things  essentially  the  same. 

While,  then,  it  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  discuss  the 
entire  psychology  of  the  subject,  some  remarks  seem  indis- 
pensable, from  the  more  disinterested  and  purely  psycho- 
logical point  of  view,  upon  the  conception  of  pleasure  or 
happiness,  and  upon  the  relation  sustained  by  pleasurable 
and  painful  conscious  states  to  that  total  activity  of  the  Self 
which  ethics  considers  under  the  name  of  conduct. 

And,  first,  when  men  speak  of  Pleasure  or  Happiness, 
they  are  always  dealing  with  the  feeling  aspect  of  conscious 
processes  or  states ;  and  this  constitutes  a  factor  of  human 
experience  that  can  be  actualized  only  in  a  subjective  and 
strictly  individual  way.  This  universal  psychological  truth 
must  not  be  overlooked  or  covered  up  in  the  interests  of  any 
theory,  hedonistic  or  anti-hedonistic,  eudsemonistic  or  utili- 
tarian. Pleasure,  happiness,  enjoyment,  even  bliss  —  which- 
ever one  of  these  words  is  employed,  and  whether  other  terms 
are  devised  to  suggest  and  seemingly  to  warrant  some  modi- 
fication of  the  conception,  or  not,  an  element  which  remains 
substantially  unchanged  in  them  all  must  be  distinctly  recog- 
nized ;  and  this  element  must  not  be  confused  with  other 
essentially  different  elements  that  are  quite  too  often  intro- 
duced in  order  to  produce  a  false  appearance  of  breadth  and 
depth  to  the  foundations  of  the  ethical  theories  based  upon 
them.  This  element,  always  substantially  unchanged,  is  that 
purely  subjective  feeling-tone  which  psychology  treats  under 
a  theory  of  pleasure -pains. 

But  pleasure-pains  are  not  entities;  neither  are  they  gen- 
eral notions,  whether  academic  or  popular  in  their  logical 
construction.  They  have  no  existence  except  in  concrete, 
individual  experiences;  to  be  actualized,  or  brought  into 
being,  they  must  be  experienced ;  to  be  experienced,  they  must 


UTILITARIANISM  IN  ETHICS  471 

be  — not  thought  or  thought  about,  hut  felt.  For  one  man  to 
tell  another  that  he  ought  to  be  happy  is  not  to  make  him 
happy ;  nor  does  assuring  the  wrong-doer  that  he  ought  to  be 
unhappy  necessarily  increase  his  unhappiness.  To  proclaim 
the  comforting  (?)  doctrine,  "  Be  good  and  you  will  be  happy," 
does  not  alter  the  matter-of-fact  experience  of  every  man  that, 
in  his  own  case,  and  in  multitudes  of  other  cases  moral  good- 
ness and  happiness  really  do  not  go  hand  in  hand ;  —  while  to 
say  to  men  who  are  consciously  unhappy  that  they  are  really 
happy,  or  to  those  who  feel  their  own  lives  to  be  a  succession 
of  pleasant  states,  that  they  are  really  miserable,  is,  so  long 
as  one  does  not  covertly  introduce  distinctions  of  another 
order,  a  performance  which  would  be  always  amusingly 
impudent  were  it  not  so  often  desperately  embittering.  All 
conscious  states,  quoad  their  pleasure-pain  qualification,  are 
essentially  of  one  order;  and  that  order  cannot  be  deter- 
mined by  the  advice  of  the  moralists,  or  altered  by  the 
pronunciamento  of  the  psychologists.  It  really  is  what  it 
is  to  the  one  whose  state  it  is  —  pleasure  or  pain,  happiness 
or  unhappiness,  enjoyment  or  misery;  and  no  one  else's  con- 
ception of  "ought"  or  "ought  not,"  of  "real "  or  "illusory," 
so  long  as  it  is  simply  the  character  of  the  feeling,  and  of  its 
pleasure-pain  tone  which  is  under  discussion,  has  anything 
to  do  with  the  true  nature  of  such  experiences. 

From  this  it  follows,  in  the  second  place,  that  any  judg- 
ment as  to  the  intensity  and  the  value  (as  pleasure  or 
happiness)  of  all  pleasurable  or  painful,  happy  or  unhappy, 
experiences,  is  also  subjective  and  individual.  As  the 
feeling  itself  cannot  be  rendered  into  conceptual  form  so 
as  to  transfer  it  from  one  consciousness  to  another,  so  the 
quantitative  and  qualitative  estimate  of  the  feeling  cannot  be 
made  permanent  and  universal  by  another's  thought.  Every 
soul  knows  its  own  joy  as  well  as  its  own  bitterness  —  how 
great  it  is,  how  unsatisfying  or  otherwise  it  seems;  and 
which  form  of  either  joy  or  sorrow  is  most  approved  or  most 


472  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

dreaded  in  its  own  sight.  As  long  as  the  observer  maintains 
the  strictly  hedonistic  or  eudsemonistic  position,  all  ques- 
tions of  preference  and  of  estimated  value  are  questions 
strictly  of  fact.  Without  abandoning  this  position  one  has 
absolutely  no  right  to  say  for  another  that  the  pleasures  of 
poetry  are  preferable  to  push-pin,  or  that  the  happiness  of 
a  life  of  wise  self-sacrifice  exceeds  that  of  a  life  of  not  too 
excessive  but  morally  unscrupulous  indulgence  of  the  sensu- 
ous appetites.  One  must  somehow  get  out  of  the  hedonistic 
or  utilitarian  position;  or  else  one  is  compelled,  in  the 
seeming  interests  of  eternal  moral  truths,  to  be  constantly 
telling  lies  about  the  actual  experience  of  mankind.  If  A 
actually  prefers  drinking  beer  to  psalm-singing,  or  getting 
and  spending  money  immorally  to  leading  a  poor  but  honest 
life,  or  pandering  for  success  to  the  lower  standards  rather 
than  preserving  the  consciousness  of  having  followed  a  high 
professional  or  artistic  ideal,  B  can  never  persuade  A  to 
truly  virtuous  living  simply  by  reciting  the  greater  and  supe- 
rior pleasures  that  characterize  ^'s  consciousness.  The 
judgment  which  prefers  the  pleasure  a  to  the  pleasure  x, 
quoad  pleasure,  is  a  subjective  fact,  and  that  is  all  there  is 
of  it  as  belonging  merely  to  the  sentient  self.  When  the 
individual  intelligence  attempts  to  stick  by  the  standard  of 
happiness,  its  quantity  or  kind  merely,  and  at  the  same  time 
masquerade  as  rational  and  talk  about  what  is  universally 
noble  and  what  is  ignoble,  it  makes  itself  ridiculous. 

And,  third,  so  far  as  personal  experience  and  observation 
of  others  can  teach  one,  it  does  not  appear  that  the  habit  or 
quality  of  men's  moral  consciousness  is  ever  the  chief  deter- 
^  mining  factor  in  their  experience  of  pleasure-pains.  One 
may  not  be  greatly  tempted,  indeed,  to  adopt  off-hand  the 
cynical  maxim  that  the  chief  conditions  of  human  happiness 
are,  like  those  of  the  pleasures  of  the  lower  animals,  "no  con- 
science and  a  good  digestion. "  But  as  the  average  man  is  con- 
stituted and  situated  in  the  present  world  environment,  the 


UTILITAEIANISM  IN  ETHICS  473 

conditions  of  happiness  are,  so  far  as  they  reside  in  the 
individual,  undoubtedly  physiological  and  temperamental 
rather  than  ethical  and  spiritual.  When  men  of  widely 
separate  classes  or  stages  of  development  contemplate  each 
other  objectively  they  are  apt  to  form  entirely  erroneous 
conceptions  of  the  pleasure-pain  experiences  of  one  another. 
Anthropology  is  just  now  depicting  the  desperately  miser- 
able condition  of  primitive  man,  as  he  struggled  perpetually 
for  a  scanty  existence  against  the  forces  of  unsubdued  nature, 
against  horrid  cold  and  heat,  wild  beasts,  and  the  invisible 
terrors  with  which  his  imagination  peopled  the  air  and 
waters  and  skies.  Undoubtedly  this  wholesale  conversion  of 
external  conditions  into  conscious  miseries  is  largely  weak 
sentimentalizing.  The  modern  anthropologist  writes  all  this, 
sitting  in  his  well-warmed  room  and  in  his  well-cushioned 
chair,  and  with  the  pleasurable  anticipation  of  the  renown 
and  reward  in  royalties  which  his  labors  will  bring  to  him. 
Perhaps  he  reads  his  finished  paper  before  a  group  of 
"society"  ladies  who,  before  they  go  to  their  elegant  lunch- 
eon, add  this  small  bit  of  Weltioeh  to  their  accumulated 
stock  of  sufferings,  at  once  sympathetic  and  self-complacent. 
But  his  brother  man  who  dwelt  with  the  cave-bear  and  the 
rhinoceros  as  his  constant  companion  would  probably,  could  he 
read  the  anthropologist's  book,  not  at  all  recognize  the  picture 
as  corresponding  to  his  subjectivity,  however  objectively  valid. 
It  is  altogether  likely  that  he  would  find  more  of  kinship  to 
his  own  soul's  actual  states  in  the  words  of  Browning:  — 

'*  Oh,  the  wild  joys  of  living !  the  leaping  from  rock  up  to  rock, 

the  hunt  of  the  bear, 
And  the  sleep  in  the  dried  river  channel 
How  good  is  man's  life,  the  mere  living  !  how  fit  to  employ 
All  the  heart  and  the  soul  and  the  senses  for  ever  in  joy  !  " 

Of  one  such  tribe  of  men,  at  any  rate,  a  modern  writer  says : 
"  Given  freedom  from  disease,  and  a  slain  antelope,  and  there 
could  be  no  merrier  creature  than  a  Bushman.  "^ 

1  Theal,  The  History  of  British  Colonies,  II,  South  Africa,  p.  6. 


474  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

Even  in  these  latter  days  and  more  highly  civilized  condi- 
tions which  are  generally  (but  by  no  means  surely)  supposed 
to  furnish  the  individual  with  such  improved  opportunities 
for  happy  living,  we  do  not  find  that  those  who  are  most 
governed  by  moral  considerations  are  necessarily  the  hap- 
piest. On  the  contrary,  the  healthy  performance  of  the 
physiological  functions  of  respiration,  circulation,  nutrition, 
reproduction,  etc.,  and  that  cheerful  but  not  too  careful  way 
of  taking  life  which  is  so  largely  a  matter  of  inherited  tem- 
perament, are  the  possessions  which,  whatever  else  a  human 
being  may  have  or  fail  to  have,  contribute  most  to  his  hap- 
piness in  living.  And  why  should  one  dispute  those  who, 
having  all  that  wealth  and  honor  and  social  distinctions  can 
confer,  testify  so  emphatically  that  these  goods  of  external 
living  do  not  make  them  happy.  If  now  the  very  important 
exception  be  made  of  that  inspiration  and  consolation  which 
most  really  conscientious  people  get  from  religious  faiths 
and  hopes,  I  am  sure  that  the  bare  consciousness  of  having 
striven  to  do  one's  duty  and  to  live  up  to  one's  moral  ideal, 
taken  together  (as  it  must  be)  with  all  the  conscious  failures 
and  mistakes  of  such  a  life  of  striving,  suffices  to  make 
exceedingly  few  men  very  happy.  People  who  are  happily 
satisfied  with  their  own  conduct  and  character  are  usually 
easily  satisfied.  They  are  really  getting  their  pleasure  out 
of  their  temperament  and  their  surroundings  rather  than  out 
of  their  proper  moral  consciousness. 

It  would  doubtless  seem  to  most  observers  of  modern  life 
in  the  better  conditions  of  it,  a  difficult  and  perilous  thing 
to  maintain  that  the  good  people  in  any  particular  large 
social  organization  are  not  as  a  rule  the  happiest;  and  even 
]  that  their  very  goodness  stands  much  in  the  way  of  their 
I  happiness.  But  I  should  be  quite  willing  to  maintain  this 
proposition  if  there  were  any  feasible  way  of  bringing  it  and 
its  counter  proposition  to  the  test  of  an  empirical  standard. 
Certainly  the  vulgar  Utilitarianism  which  maintains  that  it 


UTILITARIANISM  IN  ETHICS  475 

is  the  good  man's  own  fault  if  he  is  not  happier  in  his  own 
goodness,  is  quite  often  enough  rather  a  mean  way  of  adding 
insult  to  the  injury  which  any  form  of  an  extreme  hedonistic 
theory  does  to  moral  consciousness,  strictly  so-called. 

But,  in  the  fourth  place,  it  is  an  incontestable  psychologi- 
cal fact  that  all  men  recognize  different  degrees  of  intensity 
and  of  value  in  their  different  pleasure-pains,  or  happy  and 
unhappy  conscious  states.  Pleasures  succeed  pains,  and 
then  themselves  give  way  to  other  pains ;  and  mixed  states, 
in  which  one  can  scarcely  tell  whether  there  is  more  of 
pleasure  or  of  pain,  are  common  enough  as  human  experi- 
ences. Both  tones  of  feeling  rise  suddenly  or  more  slowly 
to  a,jnaximum  and  then  suddenly  or  more  slowly  die  away. 
Pleasures,  as  such,  although  they  are  not  the  original  and 
primary  objects  of  desire  or  ends  of  conduct,  when  once 
experienced  are,  unless  there  be  some  reason  to  the^contrary, 
essentially  desirable.  But  they  differ  in  their  desirable 
quality  with  different  individuals  and  with  the  same  indi- 
viduals at  different  times,  in  an  almost  unlimited  and  seem- 
ingly lawless  manner.  Indeed,  when  we  come  to  inquire 
into  the  grounds  of  this  difference  we  find  that  they  cover 
the  entire  realm  of  the  objective,  the  physical  and  social, 
as  well  as  of  the  subjective,  the  psychical  and  spiritual, 
conditions  and  aspects  of  the  conscious  life  of  man.  Why 
are  some  persons  most  happy  under  conditions  that  render 
others  most  miserable?  Why  are  all  individuals  so  liable 
to  change  as  respects  the  things  and  the  activities  that  brino; 
happiness  and  unhappiness  ?  The  Esquimaux  in  Central 
Park  is  scarcely  less  wretched  than  the  dweller  on  Fifth 
Avenue  would  be  if  consigned  to  live  in  Greenland.  Aris- 
totle tries  to  commend  his  Eudaemonism  with  the  conclusion 
"that  happiness  is  a  kind  of  speculation  or  contemplation.*- ^ 
"In  this  way  also,  therefore,  the  wise  man  will  be  happier 
than  any  one  else ; "  for  "  the  wise  man  is  the  most  beloved 

1  Nic,  Eth.,  X,  viii,  8. 


476  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

of  heaven;  and,  therefore,  we  may  conclude,  the  happiest." 
But  the  average  good  citizens  of  England  or  America,  and 
not  a  few  of  its  so-called  "educators,"  consider  this  sort  of 
activity  most  useless  and  unsatisfying;  and  nothing  would 
make  them  more  miserable  than  to  have  to  spend  their  lives 
as  men  should  who  are  made  wise  by  philosophy.  "  Bless- 
edness," says  the  "God-intoxicated"  Spinoza, ^  "consists  in 
love  towards  God,  which  arises  from  the  third  kind  of 
knowledge,  etc.  Blessedness,  therefore,  is  virtue  itself." 
No  wonder  that  the  philosopher  closes  this  Proposition  and 
his  entire  Treatise  on  Ethic  with  the  declaration:  "But  all 
noble  things  are  as  difficult  as  they  are  rare."  It  is  not  with 
rare  and  noble  experiences,  however,  that  the  psychology  of 
pleasure-pains  has  to  deal;  and  the  Spinozistic  Ethic  has 
arrived  at  its  conclusion  by  a  way  which  the  disciple  of 
Hedonisn^  in  its  most  refined  form,  cannot  possibly  follow 
without  losing  sight  both  of  his  point  of  starting  and  of  his 
goal.  For  they  are  rare  individuals,  indeed,  who  are  getting 
this  blessedness  which  is  virtue  by  living  persecuted  and 
solitary,  grinding  lenses  to  secure  a  bare  subsistence,  and 
meanwhile  enjoying  the  contemplative  love  of  the  Absolute. 
And  who  could  ever  claim  to  be  so  at  home  in  the  inmost 
soul  of  either  Aristotle  or  Spinoza  as  to  know  that  either 
moralist  was  actually  enjoying  the  proof  of  his  theory  ? 

When  an  appeal  is  taken  to  pragmatic  psychology  with  the 
inquiry  after  the  causes  of  this  endless  variety  and  cease- 
less changeableness  in  the  degrees  and  kinds  of  happiness 
which  different  men  experience  and  appreciate  so  variously, 
all  its  resources  have  to  be  ransacked  to  provide  an  answer. 
Prominent  among  these  causes  are  the  following:  The  in- 
herited characteristics  of  body  and  mind,  or  the  temper- 
ament; the  physiological  and  psychical  changes  which 
depend  upon  age,  sex,  and  external  physical  and  social 
influences;  the  varying  moods  and  fancies  of  the  individual 

1  Ethic,  Fifth  Part,  Prop.  xlii. 


UTILITARIANISM  IN   ETHICS  477 

or  of  society,  so  strange,  unaccountable,  and  often  whimsi- 
cal, as  they  appear;  the  ever  present  mighty  force  of  the 
habits  which  are,  nevertheless,  themselves  subject  to  more 
or  less  sudden  and  often  unaccountable  changes;  all  the 
quick  and  the  dead  associations  that  either  lie  close  to  the 
surface  and  are  ever  ready  to  rise  above  the  threshold  of 
consciousness,  or  those  more  deeply  buried  memories  that  a 
symbolic  and  poetical  psychology  is  fond  of  ascribing  to  a 
"subliminal"  or  "secondary"  or  even  "tertiary"  Self;  and 
those  profound  transformations  of  the  tastes  and  aptitudes, 
the  loves  and  hates,  and  of  such  sources  of  happiness  or 
unhappiness  as  result  from  the  most  fundamental  choices 
or  from  the  influences  of  the  wind  that  "  bloweth  where  it 
listeth,  and  thou  hearest  the  sound  thereof,  but  canst  not 
tell  whence  it  cometh,  and  whither  it  goeth." 

That  happinesses  and  unhappinesses  do  differ^  in  degree 
and  in  kind,  as  purely  subjective  and  individual,  there 
can  be  no  doubt.  Doubtless  then,  also,  one  may  properly 
speak  of  different  kinds  of  happiness  that  have  more  or 
less  of  value  in  the  estimate  of  their  possessors.  But  this 
difference  in  the  kind  of  the  pleasure,  quoad  pleasure,  is  a 
difference  due  to  the  complex  characteristics  of  the  conscious 
state  or  process  whose  feeling-tone  it  is ;  and  the  estimate  of 
the  value  of  the  pleasure,  quoad  pleasure,  like  the  pleasure 
itself,  is  purely  subjective  and  individual.  So  long,  then, 
as  the  criterion  and  the  end  of  conduct  are  made  to  consist 
solely  in  any  kind  or  degree  of  pleasure,  the  "  wise  man  " 
is  he  who  trusts  his  own  estimate  of  what  is  most  and  best 
(that  is,  in  fact,  preferred  by  himself)  among  the  attainable 
kinds  of  pleasure. 

Accordingly,  fifth :  From  the  hedonistic  or  utilitarian 
point  of  view,  so  long  as  one  remains  faithful  to  the  actual 
facts  of  human  experience,  one  can  never  make  distinctions 
in  pleasures  or  happinesses  that  have  in  them  any  other 
worth  than  that  which  they  actually  derive  from  the  prefer- 


478  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

ence  of  the  individual  whose  states  they  are.  To  speak  of 
higher  and  lower  pleasures,  or  of  noble  and  ignoble  pleas- 
ures, or  of  pleasures  in  which  one  ought  or  ought  not  to 
indulge,  is  at  once  either  to  falsify  the  psychological  facts 
or  to  overleap  the  utilitarian  point  of  view.  And  here 
ethics  must  beware  particularly  of  the  confusion  which 
results  from  introducing  distinctions  of  moral  worth  into 
terms  that  are  to  be  employed  subsequently  for  the  express 
purpose  of  dissolving  or  changing  the  nature  of  these  same 
distinctions.  For  this  reason  I  cannot  approve  even  of  the 
very  guarded  remark  of  Professor  Seth :  ^  "  But  we  must  dis- 
tinguish, as  Aristotle  did,  between  happiness  and  pleasure." 
For  Aristotle  failed  to  carry  out  this  distinction,  as  indeed 
from  the  nature  of  the  case,  he  was  sure  to  do ;  and  the  very 
effort  to  make  the  distinction  introduced  a  confusion  into 
his  entire  ethical  system  which  his  pupils  and  critics  have 
never  been  able  to  eradicate ;  nor  will  they  ever  be  able  to 
eradicate  it,  because  the  confusion  is  an  integral  part  of  the 
system  as  it  was  left  by  its  author.  Nor  can  I  approve  of 
the  distinction  which  the  author  just  quoted  borrow^s  with 
approbation  from  Professor  Dewey  ^:  "Pleasure  is  transitory 
and  relative,  enduring  only  while  some  special  activity  en- 
dures, and  having  reference  only  to  that  activity.  Happiness 
is  permanent  and  universal."  For  one  would  tell  the  truth 
of  fact  quite  as  well  if,  in  these  sentences,  one  interchanged 
the  words  pleasure  and  happiness ;  and  it  is  not  true  of  either 
happiness  or  pleasure  that  they  are  separable,  in  fact,  from 
special  activity,  or  ever  "permanent  and  eternal."  And 
when  the  theory  goes  on  to  say  that  "happiness  is  the  feel- 
ing of  the  whole  self  as  opposed  to  the  feeling  of  some  one 
aspect  of  self,"  it  substitutes  mysticism  for  both  psychical 
facts  and  ethical  principles.  Aristotle's  conception  of  hap- 
piness is  particularly  guilty  of  the  same  confusions  as  those 

1  Ethical  Principles,  p.  209. 

2  Psychology,  p.  293. 


UTILITARIANISM  IN  ETHICS  479 

which  distinguish  modern  Utilitarianism.  With  him,  hap- 
piness is  equal  to  the  excellence  of  the  Virtuous  Life  plus  a 
considerable  amount  of  such  pleasures  as  to  Aristotle's  mind 
seemed  indispensable  and  inseparably  connected  with  the 
practice  of  some  of  the  more  imposing  of  the  virtues  — 
namely,  liberality,  large  hospitality,  magnificence,  and  an 
independent  position  with  reference  to  the  "common  herd 
and  vile  throng "  of  men.  (Ev^atfiovla  =  dper'i]  +  yBopai 
dependent  upon  external  goods  of  a  certain  kind.) 

But  ethics  can  divide  pleasures  into  higher  and  lower, 
noble  and  ignoble,  or  difference  pleasure  from  happiness  or 
even  from  blessedness,  only  by  introducing  into  the  psycholog- 
ical conception  of  pleasure-pains  something  from  the  outside. 
That  something  is  a  standard  of  moral  values.  In  a  word,  the! 
hedonistic  standard  must  be  subordinated  by  reference  toj 
another  scale  of  values.  Another  kind  of  good  must  sit  in 
judgment  over  the  worth  of  the  good  which  men  call  pleasure 
or  happiness.  This  judgment  indeed  changes  the  kind  of 
satisfaction.  It  changes  its  kind  so  radically  that  now  we 
are  no  longer  considering  the  value  of  the  subjective  condi- 
tion as  due  to,  or  consisting  in,  any  kind  of  pleasure  or 
happiness  merely,  but  as  relative  to  the  demands  and  the 
satisfactions  of  a  higher  form  of  consciousness.  And  these 
demands  and  satisfactions  do  not  have  primarily  to  do  with 
amounts  and  kinds  of  happiness  as  such,  but  with  the  relation 
in  which  the  proposed  conduct  stands  to  the  ideal  of  a  Moral 
Self.  That  the  good  measured  by  this  standard  actually  is, 
and  is  esteemed  by  men  to  be,  another  species  of  good,  and 
by  no  means  wholly  identical  with,  or  subordinate  to,  happi- 
ness, has  already  been  shown  in  detail  (see  especially  Chapter 
III).  That  the  satisfactions  of  the  sentient  self  in  various 
relations  are  not  identical  with  those  of  the  Moral  Self  in 
social  relations  with  other  moral  selves,  but  are  rather  in 
large  measure  antithetic  and  incompatible,  has  come  to  be  the 
problem,  in  part,  with  which  all  ethical  theory  has  to  deal. 


480  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

It  is  scarcely  necessary  in  this  connection  to  discuss  the 
relation  of  desire  to  happiness.  Indeed,  the  historical  evo- 
lution of  the  Utilitarian  School  has  made  clear  to  its  own 
advocates  that  happiness  is  not,  as  was  often  formerly  as- 
sumed, the  primary  object  of  desire;  neither  is  there  any 
such  psychical  experience  as  "general  happiness."  Desire 
itself  is  a  complex  and  rather  highly  developed  psychosis.^ 
Its  affective  roots  are  in  blind  impulsive  feeling.  Experi- 
ence is  necessary  of  things  that  actually  produce  pleasure  or 
pain  in  order  to  make  desire  definite  and  to  guide  the  mind 
toward  the  ends  of  desire.  The  psychical  states  that  are  more 
properly  called  desires  are  therefore  definite ;  they  are  desires 
after  some  particular  kind  of  satisfaction;  unless,  indeed, 
they  are  species  of  that  vague  sort  of  dissatisfaction  which 
is  popularly  called,  —  "  Wanting  something,  one  knows  not 
what  ;"  —  or  unless  they  are  those  primary  forms  of  appe- 
tency with  which  nature  has  provided  the  human  animal  and 
which  serve  as  causes  for  his  earlier  impulsive  movements 
toward  some  form  of  external  good.  It  is  by  the  latter  class 
of  desires,  less  appropriately  so-called,  that  the  infant  is  con- 
trolled before  it  has  had  concrete  experience  of  the  definite 
place  of  its  various  active  functions  in  meeting  the  needs  of 
life,  or  of  their  more  precise  value  as  connected  with  life's 
pleasure-pains. 

The  old-fashioned  conception  of  man  as  a  being  that  seeks 
happiness  as  his  one  obvious,  definite,  and  comprehensible 
aim,  and  that  differs  from  the  lower  animals  chiefly  in  his 
superior  equipment  of  ability  to  calculate  more  accurately 
the  amounts  and  kinds  of  obtainable  happiness,  has  perished 
of  its  own  simplicity.  It  took  no  sufficient  account  of  the 
many  sides,  obvious  and  hidden,  of  man's  natural  equipment, 
and  of  the  many  motives,  springs,  and  estimates  of  value 
that  show  him  to  himself  as  a  being,  complex,  mysterious, 
and   suggestive  of  the   Infinite  as  tiie  Source  and  Goal  of 

1  See  my  Psychology,  Descriptive  and  Explanatory,  chap.  xxr. 


UTILITARIANISM  IN  ETHICS  481 

his  life.  Man,  as  modern  anthropology  knows  him,  is  es- 
sentially and  universally  artistic,  moral,  and  religious. 
And  although  these  qualifications  of  his  nature  do  not 
relieve  him  from  the  demands  of  his  sentient  nature  for  a 
variety  of  happy  experiences,  but  rather  reinforce  these 
demands  at  many  points,  they  are  significant  of  other  claims 
that  are  never  to  be  met  and  satisfied  by  any  quantity  or 
kind  of  such  experiences. 

If  now  one  will  keep  steadily  in  mind  the  truths  just 
stated  regarding  the  psychological  doctrine  of  the  pleasure- 
pains,  and  also  what  has  earlier  been  said  concerning  the 
nature  of  the  Moral  Self,  one  may,  without  injustice,  make 
short  work  of  every  form  of  Hedonism,  however  subtle  and 
well-fortified  with  argumentation.  In  its  most  refined  form 
of  modern  Utilitarianism,  it  cannot  explain  the  simplest 
facts  of  moral  consciousness  and  moral  development;  nor 
can  it  help  us  by  its  conclusions  and  its  postulates  out  of 
those  distressing  practical  antinomies  into  which  ethics  is 
conducted  by  the  survey  of  these  facts. 

From  the  very  nature  of  happiness  as  an  actual  experi- 
ence it  follows  that  the  assertion  which  makes  the  value  of 
morality  consist  in  its  being  instrumental  to  happiness 
cannot  be  maintained  in  an  indefinite  and  merely  general 
way.  Utilitarianism  cannot  be  declared  satisfactory  as  an 
ethical  theory,  after  it  has  established  a  relation  of  cause  and 
effect  between  happiness  in  general  and  morality  in  general. 
It  must,  the  rather,  be  held  strictly  accountable  for  a  defi- 
nite answer  to  the  three  following  particular  questions: 
(1)  Wliose  happiness  furnishes  the  criterion,  sanction,  and 
rational  ideal  of  morality?  Is  it  the  happiness  of  the  sub- 
ject of  the  conduct  solely;  or  also  the  happiness  of  a  few 
others  —  most  closely  connected  with  him ;  or  of  the  whole 
of  society ;  or  does  it  perhaps  also  include  the  happiness  of 
invisible  sentient  and  rational  beings  ?  (2)  When  is  this 
happiness  to  be  conceived  of  as  realizable,  in  order  that  it 

81 


482  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

may  afford  the  desired  criterion,  sanction,  and  ideal  ?  Is  it 
more  immediately,  or  in  the  near  or  more  distant  future, 
or  even  in  the  life  that  knows  no  ending  ?  (3)  What  is  the 
nature  of  the  happiness  that  stands  in  such  an  essential  rela- 
tion to  morality  ?  Does  it  include  all  manner  of  pleasure- 
pains,  as  these  are  measured  only  quantitatively  and  by  the 
conscious  estimate  of  the  individual  whose  pleasures  or  pains 
are  under  consideration  ?  Or  does  the  answer  provide  for 
the  establishment  of  a  selected  judicature  composed  of  "  wise 
men,"  who  are  authorized  to  decide  what  pleasure-pains 
ought  to  be  preferred  ?  And  once  more,  for  what  reason 
ought  others  to  prefer  the  pleasures  which  moralists  recom- 
mend, even  when  these  pleasures  are  so  mixed  with  pains 
and  sometimes  so  submerged  and  lost  in  pains  that  they  can 
scarcely  be  distinguished  as  pleasures  ?  Is  the  obligation  to 
prefer  them  due  to  the  inherent  superiority  of  their  pleasure- 
giving  quality  merely ;  or  is  it  due  to  the  nobility  they  pos- 
sess on  account  of  their  connection  with  the  consciousness  of 
moral  demands  and  moral  values  ? 

All  these  three  sets  of  questions  are  differently  answered 
by  the  different  modifications  of  Hedonism,  from  its  most 
crass  and  morally  shocking  forms  to  the  forms  that  are  most 
refined  and  captivating.  I  begin  at  the  lowest  levels.  Ego- 
istic and  quantitative  Hedonism  claims  that  the  amount  of 
the  pleasure  which  the  individual  can  get  for  himself  out  of 
life  is  the  sole  criterion,  sanction,  and  rational  end  of  his 
conduct.  "Quantity  of  pleasure  being  equal,  push-pin  is  as 
good  as  poetry."  It  is  now  well-nigh  universally  admitted, 
however,  that  this  form  of  Hedonism  is  incapable  of  any 
theoretical  construction  whatever.  And,  indeed,  it  is  doubt- 
ful whether  any  class  of  individuals,^  even  in  spite  of  their 
boasting  such  purity  of  selfish  calculation,  do  actually  make 

1  As  Carlyle  has  declared;  "In  the  meanest  mortal  there  lies  something 
nobler."  Even  the  depreciating  remark  of  Gellius  —  'HSovr;  reAos,  v6pvris  Uyfxa, 
does  not  express  correctly  the  truth  of  fact.  Few  prostitutes  are  so  vile  as  actu- 
ally to  be  Hedonists  of  this  order. 


UTILITARIANISM  IN  ETHICS  488 

the  sole  principle  of  their  conduct,  the  obtaining  for  them- 
selves the  maximum  of  pleasure,  with  a  total  disregard  of 
the  pleasures  and  pains  of  others  except  as  affecting  their  own. 
If,  however,  any  considerable  number  of  persons  should  be 
discovered  whose  consciousness  gave  no  response  to  other 
interests  than  those  represented  by  the  amount  of  the  sub- 
jective feeling  of  pleasure  attainable  by  themselves,   such 
persons  could  never  serve  as  an  empirical  basis  for  any  form 
of  an  ethical  theory.     All  that  ethics  could  do  with  such 
monstrosities  would  be  to  note  the  fact  of  their  existence. 
Whereas  Aristotle  and  Spinoza  considered  the  noblest  hap- 
piness to  consist  in  the  activity  of  the  speculative  reason, 
these  creatures  find  their  utmost  quantity  of  pleasure,  pre- 
sumably, in  some  other  way.     But  from  such  comparisons 
no  principle  emerges  for  the  determination  of  the  goodness 
and  badness  of  conduct.     For  the  point  of  starting  shifts 
with   every  individual's  experience;  and,  indeed,  with  the 
shifting   experience   of  every  individual.     No   criterion   is 
attainable  that  even  approaches  the  secure  position  where  it 
can  make  a  claim  to  generality.     Much  less  can  any  sanction 
or  ideal  of  conduct  be  obtained  in  this  way.     To  tell  any 
man  that,  in  fact,  by  behaving  in  a  certain  manner  toward 
others,  he  will  obtain  the  maximum  of  pleasure  for  himself, 
when  the  same  man  finds  himself  obtaining  more  pleasure 
for  himself  by  behaving  in  a  quite  different  way,  is  hard 
enough  doctrine  to  enforce.     But  to  give  sanctions  to  such 
advice,   and  to  issue  it   in  the  name  of  duty  and   for  the 
purpose  of  arousing  feelings  of  moral  obligation,  is  to  in- 
volve one's  self  in  an  absurd  circulus  in  arguendo.     And, 
finally,  how  can  there  be  rational  justification  for  placing 
the  grounds  of  moral  obligation  in  the  maximum  of   each 
individual's  own  happiness  when  the  moral  consciousness 
of  those  whom  the  ethical  judgment  of  mankind  has  agreed 
to  call  morally  most  worthy  has  been  foremost  in  renouncing 
this  standard  of  morality  ? 


484  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

When  Hedonism  lays  aside  its  more  pronounced  egoistic 
features,  while  retaining  the  measure  o£  mere  quantity  of 
pleasure,  it  presents  indeed  a  distinctly  improved  appearance, 
but  it  still  fails  to  answer  the  demands  of  a  satisfactory 
ethical  theory.  The  investigator  can  now,  on  the  basis  of 
experience  with  large  numbers  of  men  through  long  periods 
of  time,  make  some  approach  to  a  defensible  view  as  to  what 
kinds  of  conduct  and  types  of  character  conduce  to  the  maxi- 
mum of  pleasures  in  the  greatest  number.  Yet  the  standard 
is  exceedingly,  and  even  increasingly,  complicated  and  diffi- 
cult of  application ;  and  he  is  constantly  in  danger  of  falling 
under  the  fallacy  that  the  natural  conditions,  the  kinds  of 
behavior,  and  the  constitution  of  society,  which  are  conceived 
of  as  fitted  to  make  him  happy,  or  to  make  his  set  happy,  are 
of  like  applicability  to  all  the  suxjcessive  generations  of  men, 
in  all  grades  of  social  progress  and  under  all  classes  of 
social  organization.  Hence,  in  part,  the  significance  of  the 
disputes  that  arise  in  so-called  social  science.  Difficult  of 
nice  comparative  estimate  as  the  virtues  of  men  are,  their 
happinesses  are  even  in  worse  case  in  this  regard.  The 
traits  of  the  good  man  are  easier  to  describe  than  are  the 
conditions  and  circumstances  which  make  all  men  happy. 
Persons  most  envied  for  their  happy  estate  not  infrequently 
commit  suicide  to  escape  from  misery;  and  in  the  exercise 
of  the  virtues  of  courage  and  fidelity,  not  a  few  have  calmly 
taken  their  own  lives,  or  submitted  them  to  be  taken  by 
others. 

It  would  not  be  fair,  indeed,  to  demand  of  this  altruistic 
but  quantitative  Hedonism  that  it  should  provide  ethics  with 
such  an  exact  standard  of  measuring  happiness  as  to  facili- 
tate tke  prompt  solution  of  all  cases  of  conflict  of  duties.  As 
I  have  already  shown,  such  a  readily  available  standard  can 
be  afforded  by  no  system  of  ethical  principles  or  code  of 
moral  laws.  But  the  attempt  to  apply  this  particular  form 
of  the  hedonistic  standard  —  namely,    the   amount   of  so- 


UTILITARIANISM  IN  ETHICS  486 

called  "  general  happiness  "  which  the  particular  conduct  in 
question  will  produce  —  is  something  in  which  no  one  can 
possibly  become  an  expert.  The  rule  for  the  ordinary  man 
must  be  an  uncritical  following  of  custom  or  external  forms 
from  which  the  genuine  moral  quality  has  largely  departed. 
In  this  way  all  the  so-called  virtues  tend  to  become  merely 
prudential ;  and  the  wider  the  ranges  of  time  and  greater  the 
changes  of  conditions  which  are  taken  into  the  account  the 
more  uncertain  does  all  realization  of  the  ideal  of  conduct 
become,  if  this  ideal  is  so  conceived  as  to  correspond  with 
the  phrase  "  the-  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number. " 
Even  more  difficult  is  it  for  this  altruistic,  but  still  quan- 
titative Hedonism  to  justify  itself  in  view  of  the  immense 
influence  which  the  discipline  of  struggle  and  pain  has 
always  exercised  over  the  moral  development  of  the  indi- 
vidual and  of  the  race.  In  view  of  this  influence  the  theory 
shows  us  the  spectacle  of  an  interminable  series  of  somer- 
saults which  never  allow  the  person  turning  them  to  light 
anywhere  upon  his  feet.  Let  us  suppose  some  good  and  wise 
man  to  train  his  family  of  children  or  his  pupils  and  wards 
exclusively  upon  this  principle.  Certain  virtues  must  be 
enforced  by  painful  discipline,  otherwise  the  entire  scheme 
will  certainly  go  wholly  awry.  This  enforcement  bears 
heavily  upon  the  susceptibilities  for  current  pains  and 
pleasures  of  each  member  of  the  community.  What  is  the 
warrant  for  this  disciplinary  suppression  of  the  pleasures 
and  increase  of  the  pains  of  this  small  community  ?  It 
must  be  found  in  the  interests  of  their  relations  to  a  larger 
community.  But  this  larger  community,  this  present  gen- 
eration of  men  and  women,  cannot  pursue  virtuously  its  own 
maximum  of  pleasures  and  minimum  of  pains,  if  the  pur- 
suit is  conducted  without  any  regard  to  the  next  generation 
who  are  to  be  its  successors  in  the  ethical  evolution  of  the 
race.  The  next  generation  are  in  their  turn  restricted  in 
like  manner  in  their  pursuit  of  the  maximum  of  pleasures 


486  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

for  them.  But  will  the  whole  happy  result  culminate  in 
those  far-off  generations  of  men  who,  having  entered  into 
the  reward  of  the  self-discipline  and  self-denial  of  us  and 
of  all  their  other  ancestors,  have  attained  the  purely  quan- 
titative and  hedonistic  social  ideal  —  the  maximum  of 
pleasures  for  the  greatest  number  ?  Will  they  be  able  to 
contain,  as  it  were,  —  even  if  they  attain  all  they  can 
contain,  —  enough  of  the  ideal  end  to  compensate  for  the 
accumulated  pains  of  moral  discipline  and  altruistic  self- 
denial  which  all  the  preceding  generations  have  endured  in 
their  behalf  ?  Who  can  say  ?  And  who  would  be  willing 
to  have  the  worth  of  his  own  moral  selfhood,  or  of  the 
present  virtuous  living  of  men,  as  a  good-in-itself,  estimated 
in  this  uncertain  way  ?  It  seems  to  me  that  we  are  all  en- 
titled to  a  release  from  the  obligation  to  suffer  so  much  as 
respects  the  attainable  maximum  of  our  own  happiness,  if 
this  suffering  is  a  mere  form  of  functioning  in  the  interests 
of  the  happiness  of  others ;  especially  where  the  factors  of 
our  calculation  are  so  remote  and  uncertain.  And,  indeed, 
how  can  we  speak  of  obligation  as  resting  on  such  a  basis 
as  this  ?  For  even  if  this  form  of  Hedonism  furnished  an 
approximately  useful  measure  or  criterion  of  the  moral 
quality  of  the  individual's  conduct,  it  utterly  fails  to  afford 
a  sanction  for  morality.  As  Professor  Dewey  has  saidi^ 
"Because  all  men  want  to  be  happy,  it  hardly  follows  that 
every  man  wants  all  to  be  happy."  Still  further:  If  it 
could  be  shown  that  all  men  would  actually  be  happier,  if 
every  man  wanted  all,  irrespective  of  their  conduct  and 
character,  to  be  happy,  it  would  by  no  means  follow  that 
every  man  ought  to  want  all  to  be  good,  and  to  be  happy  in 
and  through  their  goodness.  But  it  is  just  in  this  form 
that  the  desire  to  promote  the  happiness  of  others  receives 
its  highest  and  most  unquestioned  sanction  from  the  educated 
moral  consciousness.     The  right-minded  and  rational  regard 

1  Outlines  of  Ethics,  p.  55  f. 


UTILITARIANISM  IN  ETHICS  487 

for  the  happiness  of  others  expresses  itself  in  every  one  of 
the  cardinal  virtues;  —  in  courage,  temperance,  and  con- 
stancy, in  wisdom,  justice,  and  truth,  in  kindness  and 
benevolence.  But  the  unrestricted  desire  to  get  the  utmost 
quantity  of  pleasure  for  ourselves  or  to  furnish  it  to  others, 
regardless  of  moral  considerations  and  of  the  effects  upon 
the  moral  life  and  development  of  one's  self  and  of  society, 
is  a  vicious  and  not  a  virtuous  desire.  To  admit  such  a 
conclusion  is  at  once  to  break  down  all  the  claims  of  this 
form  of  Hedonism.  It  is  to  admit  that,  if  mere  quantity  of 
pleasure  distributed  among  the  greatest  number  is  to  be 
regarded  as  the  sole  measure  of  the  morality  of  conduct,  all 
attempt  must  be  abandoned  to  find  a  rational  ground  for 
that  feeling  of  obligation  with  which  moral  consciousness 
regards  even  the  most  painful  and  disagreeable  of  human 
duties. 

In  a  word,  you  cannot  appeal  to  my  reason,  and  get 
its  sanctions  in  behalf  of  my  denying  to  myself  and  to  the 
little  circle  of  friends  in  which  I  am  especially  interested, 
the  most  of  pleasures  attainable  simply  on  the  ground  that 
future  generations  of  unknown  individuals  will  possibly,  or 
probably,  thereby  have  made  a  greater  amount  of  pleasures 
obtainable  for  themselves.  When,  therefore,  the  advocate  of 
Hedonism  affirms, ^  "The  fact  that  'I  am  I '  cannot  make  my 
happiness  intrinsically  more  desirable  than  the  happiness  of 
any  other  person,"  he  is  guilty  of  a  most  astonishing  fallacy. 
For  what  does  "  intrinsically  "  mean  in  such  a  strange  con- 
nection ?  Does  it  mean  to  speak  of  "my  happiness"  as 
abstracted  from  the  consideration  that  "  I  am  I  ?"  Then  the 
statement  becomes  either  absurdly  tautological  or  wholly 
unmeaning.  Or  does  it  mean  that  to  me,  in  fact  (actually)^ 
my  happiness  is  no  more  desirable  than  that  of  any  other 
person  ?     In  this  case  the  statement  contradicts   the  psy- 

1  Compare  the  entire  argument  of  Professor  Sidgwick  on  this  point,  in  hifl 
*'  The  Methods  of  Ethics." 


488  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

chological  basis  on  which  all  forms  of  the  hedonistic  theory 
repose.  Or  perhaps  —  and  this  is  the  only  intelligible  mean- 
ino*  —  it  is  the  intention  of  the  author  to  remind  us,  that  in  a 
social  and  moral  system,  where  those  rational  considerations 
which  are  appreciated  by  the  Moral  Self  are  prevalent,  the 
individual  may  not  worthily  or  rightly  regard  his  own  hap- 
piness as  more  desirable  than  the  happiness  of  "  any  other 
person."  But  in  this  case,  every  trace  of  an  hedonistic 
position  has  been  completely  abandoned,  and  the  altruism 
has  been  carried  to  an  extreme  which  may  be  irrational  and 
dangerous.  Much  more  truth  than  in  the  sentence  just 
quoted  is  there  in  what  Crawford  says  in  his  Corleone: 
"Happiness  that  is  solidly  founded  is  itself  a  most  negative 
source  of  the  most  all-pervading  virtue,  without  the  least 
charity  for  unhappiness'  sins;  happiness  suffices  to  itself; 
happiness  is  a  lantern  to  its  own  feet ;  it  is  all  things  to  one 
man  and  nothing  to  all  the  rest ;  it  is  an  impenetrable  wall 
between  him  who  has  it  and  mankind."  That  is  to  say: 
The  estate  of  Eudcemonism  which  even  Aristotle  makes  the  end 
of  virtuous  conduct  tends  to  separate  men  from  sympathy  with 
the  unhappy  lot  of  the  multitude  of  mankind. 

The  irrational  and  even  ludicrous  extremes  of  sentiment 
to  which  the  mind  is  driven  by  a  merely  quantitative  He- 
donism receive  ample  illustration  in  the  history  of  literature. 
The  ancient  Epicureans  set  up  the  claim  that  the  wise  man, 
even  on  the  rack,  is  enabled  to  say:  "How  sweet,"  —  a 
declaration  which  rivals  the  most  extreme  statements  of 
the  most  ultra  Stoicism,  but  is  quite  impossible  to  interpret 
from  the  merely  hedonistic  point  of  view.  In  the  last  scene 
of  Victor  Hugo's  Hernani,  where  the  two  lovers,  who  have 
so  long  been  separated,  are  at  last  united  in  death,  — and 
this,  a  death  of  the  most  frightful  agony,  —  a  bystander, 
Don  Ruy  Gomez,  cries:  "How  happy  they  are!"  The 
exclamation  may  bear  witness  to  an  isolated  fact;  but  if 
the  problem  of  determining  the  virtue  of  such  constancy  as 


UTILITARIANISM  IN  ETHICS  489 

that  shown  by  these  two  lovers  were  proposed  to  this  form  of 
Hedonism,  and  were  decided  by  a  calculation  of  the  greatest 
amount  of  happiness  to  be  got  for  the  greater  number  by 
similar  conduct,  the  sum  in  proportions  would  not  be  likely 
to  be  worked  out  by  any  sane  mind  to  a  satisfactory  result.^ 
Over  against  such  perversions  of  fact  by  sentiment  we  may 
set  the  facts  that  the  worst  criminals  are  rarely  troubled  by 
remorse ;  and  that  a  sensitive  nature  like  that  of  Heine 
could  declare  he  would  rather  suffer  a  life-time  of  such  pain 
as  a  disapproving  conscience  could  give  him  than  endure  the 
pangs  of  tooth-ache  for  a  single  hour. 

The  hedonistic  view  of  ethical  facts  has  in  comparatively 
recent  times  been  made  much  more  plausible  by  being 
complicated  with  two  important  improvements.  These  are 
(1)  the  proposal  to  establish  some  standard  of  the  higher  and 
lower  values,  some  measure  of  the  worth  of  different  kinds 
of  happiness ;  and  (2)  the  addition  of  the  theory  of  evolution 
in  order  to  account  for  those  actual  modifications  which  have 
taken  place  in  men's  estimates  of  these  values,  and  for  the 
corresponding  changes  in  ethical  judgments,  and  in  the 
accepted  rating  of  the  particular  virtues  and  vices. 

Now  it  cannot  be  denied  that  if  one  does  not  criticise  its 
conception  too  closely,  modern  Utilitarianism  as  thus 
modified  and  fortified,  is  able  to  answer  certain  objections 
that  are  easily  shown  to  be  fatal  to  the  older  forms  of  quan- 
titative Hedonism.  Modern  Utilitarianism  also  makes  it 
more  probable,  upon  an  empirical  and  historical  basis  that 
in  the  long  run  and  in  the  large  way,  a  coincidence  may  be 

1  Of  the  principle  adopted  by  Hedonism  of  the  mixed  social  and  quantitative 
order,  as  a  rule  of  conduct  admitting  of  practical  application,  Dumont  says  in  the 
Discours  prdiminaire  to  his  Trait^s  de  Legislation  the  following  :  "  Pour  avoir  une 
connaissance  precise  du  principe  de  I'utilite',  il  a  fallu  composer  une  table  de  tons 
les  plaisirs  et  de  toutes  les  peines.  Ce  sont  la  les  premiers  ele'ments,  les  chiffres 
du  calcul  moral.  Comme  en  arithmetique  on  travaille  sur  des  nombres  qu'il  faut 
connaitre,  en  legislation  on  travaille  sur  des  plaisirs  et  des  peines,  dont  il  faut 
avoir  une  exacte  enume'ration."  What  a  hopeless  task  such  a  table  offers  to 
psychologist  or  to  legislator ! 


490  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

established  between  the  welfare  which  the  Sentient  Self 
craves  —  namely,  the  welfare  of  happiness  —  and  the  welfare 
which  the  Moral  Self  demands  and  appreciates,  —  namely, 
the  realization  in  conduct  and  character  of  an  ideal  person- 
ality. This  is  indeed  a  very  ancient  truth,  and  has  of  old 
been  taught  with  relatively  little  parade  of  scientific  appa- 
ratus: "Say  ye  to  the  righteous  it  shall  be  well  with  him;" 
and  "  It  is  righteousness  that  exalteth  a  nation ; "  —  these 
and  similar  expressions  emphasize  the  connection  of  the 
ethical  with  the  eudsemonistic  aspect  of  human  experience. 
But  what  utilitarian  theories  of  every  sort  really  prove  is 
not  what  they  set  out  to  prove ;  neither  is  it,  strictly  speak- 
ing, what  they  claim  to  prove.  To  show  that  happiness  and 
virtuous  conduct  are,  for  human  beings  in  their  historical 
evolution,  largely  interdependent  is  quite  a  different  thing 
from  showing  that  the  virtuousness  of  virtuous  conduct  con- 
sists solely  in  its  utility  to  produce  happiness. 

A  philosophy  of  conduct  which  is  founded  upon  experience 
may  even  be  led  to  believe  that  the  ultimate  goal  of  human 
striving  is  a  social  life  in  which  all  the  forms  of  what  the 
mind  esteems  as  "  in-itself-Good  "  unite  to  constitute  a 
complete  and  total  Welfare.  But  we  cannot  entertain  this 
picture  of  complete  happiness  and  perfect  righteousness,  com- 
bined and  objectively  realized  for  mankind,  without  holding 
to  principles  and  postulates  which  can  by  no  means  be  placed 
upon  a  merely  psychological  and  historical  basis.  What  is 
at  once  evident,  however,  in  view  of  the  relations  which 
psychology  and  history  establish  between  human  happiness 
and  the  evolution  of  human  morality,  is  this :  just  so  far  as 
modern  Utilitarianism  explains  these  relations  it  abandons 
its  purely  hedonistic  positions.  Every  one,  even  the  most 
high  and  dry  Rigorist,  like  Kant,  admits  the  psychological 
and  historical  connections  of  the  two  forms  of  "the  Good." 
Nor  is  the  utilitarian  claim  established  when  it  is  shown 
that  the  happiness  which  follows  directly  from  morality  — 


UTILITARIANISM  IN  ETHICS  491 

whatever  there  may  be  of  it  —  is  actually  more  highly  prized 
in  the  conscious  estimate  of  good  men  than  are  the  pleasures 
of  sensuous  gratification. 

In  brief,  Utilitarianism  in  Ethics  claims  that  the  criterion, 
the  sanctions,  and  the  rational  end  of  conduct  are  all  to  be 
found  wholly  in  the  relatioa  which  conduct  sustains  to 
human  happiness.  Conduct  is,  in  fact,  a  function  produc- 
tive of  happiness  or  of  unhappiness;  this  is  one  truth  of 
experience.  But  men  call  conduct  "good"  or  "bad,"  — 
meaning  by  these  terms  to  designate  the  characteristics  of 
conduct  in  relation  to  another  ideal  standard  than  that  of 
happiness.  This  is  another  truth  of  experience.  These 
two  truths  cannot  be  united  in  the  theory  that  conduct  is  to 
be  considered,  from  the  ethical  point  of  view,  solely  as  a 
function  productive  of  happiness  or  unhappiness;  that  the 
rationality  of  the  demand  made  upon  moral  consciousness 
for  right  conduct  is  based  solely  upon  the  value  of  its 
eudaemonistic  tendency;  and,  finally,  that  the  ideal  end  at 
which  moral  self -culture  aims  is  solely  the  end  of  happiness. 

To  review  the  problem  of  conduct  as  it  now  comes  before 
us  for  solution:  We  are  seeking  for  some  rational  account  of 
the  origin  and  grounds  of  that  quality  of  "  Tightness  "  which 
men  attribute  to  some  conduct  in  preference  to  others.  We 
are  seeking  not  so  much  to  explain  the  facts  of  particular 
preferences,  but  to  discover  a  universal  basis  which  our 
rational  nature  may  approve  for  the  fact  of  this  kind  of  a 
preference.  In  the  course  of  the  search,  the  admission  has 
been  forced  from  the  advocates  of  the  hedonistic  theory  that 
men  do  not  actually  regard  the  preference  of  morally  right 
conduct  as  identical  with  the  choice  of  the  course  which 
seems  to  bring  the  maximum  of  mere  happiness.  The  admis- 
sion has  also  been  forced  that  men  do  not  regard  themselves 
as  obligated  to  seek  happiness,  nor  do  they  claim  the  sanc- 
tions of  conscience  for  seeking  happiness,  in  the  same  way  as 
for  the  effort  to  do  right,  and  for  the  striving  after  the  reali- 


492  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

zation  of  the  moral  Ideal.  The  admission  has  also  been 
forced  that,  in  the  practical  reason  of  mankind,  the  ideal  of 
happiness  and  the  ideal  of  a  Moral  Self  functioning  perfectly 
so  far  as  its  own  conduct  is  concerned,  in  social  relations  to 
other  selves,  are  not  absolutely  identical  ideals.  What  more 
is  needed  to  constitute  the  admission  that  the  criterion,  the 
sanctions,  and  the  ideal  end  of  conduct,  as  regarded  from 
the  point  of  view  of  ethics,  are  not  to  be  found  in  happiness 
alone  ? 

Now,  however,  a  last  attempt  is  made  to  escape  from  the 
full  force  of  the  objections  to  Utilitarianism  by  claiming  a 
special  dignity  and  worth  for  certain  happy  experiences,  for 
those  —  namely  —  that  accompany  or  follow  such  conduct  as 
is  esteemed  morally  right ;  especially,  perhaps,  if  it  be  of  a 
somewhat  rare  and  heroic  character.  Why,  however,  even 
if  it  could  be  shown  that,  in  fact,  the  better  men  are,  the 
more  they  have  of  this  especially  choice  kind  of  happiness, 
is  the  happiness  entitled  on  rational  grounds  to  be  invested 
with  such  a  peculiar  worth  ?  Only  because  this  worth  is 
imparted  to  it  by  the  moral  consciousness  of  mankind.  In 
other  words,  we  note  the  fact  of  man's  moral  consciousness 
functioning  so  as  to  dignify  a  certain  kind  of  happiness; 
and,  indeed,  imparting  a  remarkable  dignity  and  worth  to 
this  kind  of  happiness.  The  Moral  Self  appears  to  raise 
some  of  its  own  rarer  happy  experiences  to  a  limit  of  value 
which  makes  them  quite  over-reach  in  worth  all  other  happy 
experiences.  But  this  is  the  benediction  of  righteousness 
bestowed  upon  pleasure,  and  not  the  functioning  of  morally 
right  conduct  for  the  production  of  pleasure. 

To  make  the  theory  of  Hedonism  depend  upon  distinctions 
in  the  rational  worth  of  certain  happinesses  is,  it  seems  to  me, 
a  complete  abandonment  of  its  fundamental  position.  For 
the  rightness  of  conduct  is  no  longer  located  in  its  energy  as 
productive  of  happy  states  of  consciousness;  its  worth  is  no 
longer  estimated  according  to  the  measure  of  its  hedonistic 


UTILITARIANISM  IN  ETHICS  493 

utility.  On  the  contrary,  the  rational  worth  of  certain 
pleasurable  states  of  consciousness  is  now  found  to  consist 
in  the  appreciation  which  the  moral  nature  of  man  gives  to 
them  on  account  of  their  connection  with  right  conduct. 
The  sentient  Self  is  no  longer  authorized  to  dictate  the 
supreme  and  final  purpose  to  the  moral  Self.  The  right  of 
the  moral  Self  is  now  acknowledged  to  set  its  own  stamp  of 
values  upon  the  pleasure-pain  states  of  the  sentient  Self. 

The  refusal  to  regard  morality  as  having  either  its  cri- 
terion, its  sanctions,  or  its  ideal,  in  happiness  merely,  has 
been  so  complete  in  the  world's  best  literature  that  one 
scarcely  need  cite  examples  to  show  this  truth.  Dramatists, 
poets,  biographers,  and  historians,  who  have  taken  the  ethi- 
cal point  of  view,  as  well  as  the  surer  insight  of  the  highest 
class  of  modern  novelists,  have  refused  to  depict  or  to  esti- 
mate the  values  of  human  life  in  terms  merely  of  pleasure 
and  pain,  of  happiness  and  suffering.  The  necessary  disci- 
pline of  pain,  and  the  moral  worthiness  of  disregarding  the 
purely  hedonistic  standard  have  so  impressed  the  minds  of 
the  poets  generally  as  to  evoke  many  passages  like  that  one 
often  quoted  from  Browning's  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra :  — 

"  Then  welcome  each  rebuff 
That  turns  earth's  smoothness  rough. 
Each  sting  that  bids  nor  sit  nor  stand  but  go  1 
Be  our  joys  three  parts  pain, 
Strive,  and  hold  cheap  the  strain; 
Learn,  nor  account  the  pang  ;  dare,  never  grudge  the  throe." 

The  same  relation  between  morality  and  the  pleasure- 
pains  is  recognized  by  George  Eliot  in  the  Epilogue  to 
Romola :  "  We  can  only  have  the  highest  happiness,  such  as 
goes  along  with  being  a  great  man,  by  having  wide  thoughts 
and  much  feeling  for  the  rest  of  the  world  as  well  as  for  our- 
selves; and  this  sort  of  happiness  often  brings  so  much  pain 
with  it,  that  we  can  only  tell  it  from  pain  by  its  being  what 
we  would  choose  before  everything  else,  because  our  souls 


494  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

see  that  it  is  good."  Bat  such  discourse  connects  itself  far 
better  with  Stoicism  than  with  any  form  of  Hedonism,  — not 
excepting  even  the  hedonistic  side  of  a  Eudasmonism  like 
that  of  Aristotle. 

When  combined  with  elements  of  a  quasi -ToligioviS  char- 
acter, this  anti-utilitarian  morality  may  take  utterance  in 
words  like  those  of  Marcus  Aurelius :  ^  "  What,  then,  is  that 
about  which  we  ought  to  employ  our  serious  pains  ?  This 
one  thing:  thoughts  just,  and  acts  social,  and  words  which 
never  lie,  and  a  disposition  which  cheerfully  accepts  all  that 
happens,  as  necessary,  as  usual,  as  flowing  from  a  principle 
and  source  of  the  same  kind."  Or,  as  Bacon  in  a  somewhat 
Ayjoer-senti mental  way^  states  the  ideal  of  conduct  to  be 
striven  for  under  the  existing  conditions  of  human  life: 
"Certainly  it  is  heaven  upon  earth  to  have  a  man's  mind 
move  in  charity,  rest  in  Providence,  and  turn  upon  the  poles 
of  truth. "  But  all  such  testimonies  point  to  an  Idealism  in 
Ethics  which  sees  moral  goodness  and  sesthetical  sublimity 
illustrated,  the  rather,  in  a  face  like  that  given  to  Jesus  in 
Baphael's  "Bearing  of  the  Cross." 

Hedonistic  Utilitarianism,  then,  if  consistently  carried 
through,  contradicts,  rather  than  explains,  many  of  those 
facts  of  man's  moral  consciousness  which  have  been  most 
conspicuous  in  the  analysis  of  the  Moral  Self,  and  in  the 
discussion  of  the  Virtuous  Life.  Neither  human  nature, 
broadly  and  profoundly  regarded,  nor  the  nature  of  virtue, 
when  regarded  either  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  more 
common  consciousness  or  from  that  attained  by  the  heroes 
and  the  seers  among  mankind,  consents  to  the  theory  which 
places  the  criterion,  the  sanctions,  and  the  end  of  morality 
in  that  feeling-tone  of  certain  subjective  states  which  we  call 
happiness. 

1  have  already  said  that  the   considerations  which  the 

1  His  "  Reflections"  (English  translation  by  Long),  IV,  33. 

2  Essay  I. 


UTILITAEIANISM  IN  ETHICS  495 

modern  theory  of  evolution  has  brought  to  bear  upon  the 
older  forms  of  Hedonism  are  important;  and  that  their 
admission  into  the  theory  produces  certain  improvements  in 
the  current  forms  of  Utilitarianism  in  Ethics.  So  far  as 
the  theory  of  evolution  is  applied  to  the  explanation  of  the 
changes  that  have  gone  on  in  the  attitude  of  the  moral  con- 
sciousness of  the  race  toward  different  customs  and  prac- 
tices, it  throws  a  flood  of  light  upon  ethical  phenomena. 
Undoubtedly  the  experience,  both  of  the  individual  and  of 
the  race,  with  the  pleasurable  or  painful  consequences  of  the 
current  customs  and  practices  is  always  changing,  and  often 
profoundly  or  even  completely,  the  attitude  of  men  toward 
those  customs  and  practices.  The  typical  morality  is  uni- 
formly, to  a  large  extent,  the  construct  of  the  physical  and 
social  forces  that  enter  into  the  total  evolution  of  human 
life  ;  and  hedonistic  considerations  are,  of  course,  powerful 
amongst  those  forces.  But  they  are  by  no  means  the  whole 
of  the  forces  which  shape  the  moral  evolution  of  mankind ; 
and  the  history  of  this  evolution  shows  that  they  are  not. 
It  is,  therefore,  necessary  again  to  remind  ourselves  of  that 
fallacy  to  which  the  advocate  of  the  theory  of  evolution  in 
ethics  is  constantly  tempted,  — the  fallacy,  namely,  of  iden- 
tifying a  partial  and  defective  history  of  moral  development 
with  a  complete  and  satisfactory  account  of  its  causes  and 
its  principles.  But  I  have  already  made  sufficiently  clear 
what  are  the  limitations  within  which  the  theory  of  evolu- 
tion moves  in  its  attempts  to  account  for  the  Moral  Self  and 
for  the  Virtuous  Life ;  and  its  powerlessness  to  deal  with  that 
ultimate  problem  of  morality  which  we  are  now  approaching, 
I  shall  hope  to  make  clear  later  on. 

After  making  the  necessary  restrictions  and  explanations 
there  are  few  real  reasons  left  for  the  present  close  alliance 
between  Utilitarianism  and  Evolutionary  Ethics.  The  just 
claims  of  both,  as  based  upon  facts  of  experience  and  upon 
fair  conclusions  from  those  facts,  can  be  the  better  admitted 


496  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

and  incorporated  into  a  satisfactory  ethical  theory,  if  this 
alliance  is  severed.  Those  complicated  and  distinctive 
forms  of  functioning  which  make  man  a  moral  being,  can- 
not, strictly  speaking,  be  explained  as  evolved  from  any 
less  complex  and  more  vaguely  general  forms  of  functioning. 
His  moral  endowment  being  once  assumed,  however,  the 
various  modifications  which  it  undergoes  are  explicable  — 
theoretically  at  least  —  in  terms  of  the  theory  of  Evolution. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  important  part  which  man's  suscep- 
tibility to  an  increasing  variety  of  pleasures  and  of  pains 
plays  in  his  ethical  development  cannot,  of  course,  be 
denied ;  nor  should  it  ever  for  a  moment  be  lost  sight  of  by 
the  student  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct. 

Indeed,  it  is  to  these  considerations,  which  admit  the 
value  of  happiness  and  yet  deny  that  happiness  is  the  sole 
criterion,  sanction,  and  ideal  end  of  morality,  that  we  must 
attribute  that  unsettled  and  antithetic  condition  in  which 
the  ultimate  problems  of  ethics  were  left  at  the  close  of  the 
Second  Part  of  this  treatise.  And,  surely,  Utilitarianism 
in  Ethics  does  not  promise  any  measure  of  deliverance  from 
such  painful  dilemmas.  On  the  contrary,  it  widens  the  gulf, 
intensifies  the  strife,  and  perpetuates  the  schism,  between 
the  Sentient  Self  and  the  Moral  Self.  It  tends  to  make  a 
hopelessly  divided  manhood.  No  amount  and  no  subtlety 
of  intellect,  when  employed  in  calculating  amounts,  kinds, 
durations,  and  ideal  values,  of  happiness  merely,  can  so 
equip  man  as  to  fit  him  to  conduct  his  entire  life  toward  a 
rational  and  rationally  worthy  end.  We  must  look  to  some 
other  form  of  theory  for  help  in  the  further  solution  of  the 
most  pressing  problems  of  morality. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

LEGALISM  IN  ETHICS 

It  would  seem  intrinsically  improbable,  if  not  quite  absurd, 
that  a  conception  which  concerns  itself  wholly  with  the  char- 
acteristics of  personal  beings  and  with  their  relations  to  one 
another  in  society  should  be  capable  of  reduction  to  imper- 
sonal terms.  And  yet  this  is  what  is  virtually  attempted  by 
all  the  theories  which,  either  in  whole,  or  in  part,  fall  under 
the  heading  of  this  chapter.  The  attempt  itself  is  honorable ; 
it  is  the  issue  of  the  resolve  to  discover  some  principle  in 
ethics  that  shall  be  free  from  the  charge  of  being  dependent 
upon  the  subjective  changes  of  the  finite  individuals  who  con- 
stitute the  social  organization.  For,  in  truth,  there  is  some- 
thing entirely  unsatisfactory,  and  indeed  almost  shocking,  in 
the  assertion  that  the  nature  of  the  right  has  no  fixed  charac- 
teristics, either  as  regards  its  criteria,  its  sanctions,  or  its 
ideal.  Must  the  philosophy  of  conduct  confess  that  whatever 
any  man  thinks  or  feels  to  be  right  is  really  right ;  that  each 
fleeting  state  of  the  individual's  moral  consciousness  contains 
within  itself  the  true  measure  and  final  goal  of  morality  ?  Or 
is  it  the  end  of  the  matter  to  assign  an  absolute  authority  and 
unchanging  value  to  the  ethical  opinions  of  any  generation  or 
age? 

But  where,  on  the  other  hand,  are  to  be  found  criteria, 
sanctions,  and  ideals,  of  the  sort  that  ethics  seeks,  except 
in  some  one's  conscious  processes  ?  To  escape  from  this 
dilemma  of  a  complete  subjectivism,  resort  is  had  to  some 
conception  which  seems  to  offer  a  permanent  and  universal 

82 


498  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

ground  for  ethical  judgments ;  and  such  a  conception  is  that 
of  a  Moral  Law,  or  a  Moral  Order. 

In  ethics,  as  in  physical  science,  the  mind  scientifically 
inclined  is  apt  to  be  captivated  with  its  own  generalizations ; 
and  forgetting  that  the  conceptions  formed  by  generalizing 
(itself  a  mental  activity)  are  only  convenient  summaries  of 
the  habitual  manner  of  the  behavior  of  things  in  their 
manifold  relations  to  one  another,  the  devotee  to  science 
includes  in  his  conceptions  all  that  belongs  to  the  reality 
of  the  individual  things  themselves.  Then,  on  spelling  these 
conceptions  with  their  proper  capital  letters,  he  seems  to 
recognize  in  them  an  absolute  authority  and  power  ;  but  all 
this  has  been  fictitiously  imparted  to  abstractions,  as  though 
they  were  entities.  In  this  way  Law  and  Order  appear  as 
real  beings  that  rule  over  particular  facts  respecting  individual 
things  and  their  relations ;  they^  at  least,  are  immutable  and 
unchanging,  however  transitory  the  things  are,  and  however 
continuously  changing  the  relations.  Such  a  fictitious  manner 
of  regarding  tlie  phenomena  is  much  less  inappropriate,  and  less 
mischievous  too,  in  the  science  of  physical  beings  than  in  the 
study  of  the  phenomena  and  principles  of  human  conduct. 
For  things  are  impersonal ;  and  their  qualities  and  relations 
must  be  conceived  of  as  having  some  sort  of  a  reality  that  is 
independent  of  human  conscious  states. 

But  the  case  is  not  at  all  the  same  with  ethical  affairs. 
Ethical  facts  are  all  personal  —  distinctly,  and  essentially, 
and  exclusively  so.  What  kind  of  applicability  to  them  then, 
can  conceptions  have  like  that  of  an  impersonal  Law  or  an 
impersonal  World  Order  ?  Yet  there  is  not  a  little  of  ethical 
speculation,  and  some  of  it  of  a  very  exalted  and  moving  char- 
acter, which  employs  language  that,  strictly  interpreted,  im- 
plies an  impersonal  character  and  origin  for  the  criteria,  the 
sanctions,  and  the  ideals  of  human  conduct.  Do  we  ask,  for  ex- 
ample, after  the  standard  of  the  right  and  the  wrong  of  man's 
behavior  ?    It  is  asserted  that  this  standard  is  obedience  or 


LEGALISM  IN  ETHICS  499 

disobedience  to  moral  law.  Do  we  further  inquire  after  a 
rational  ground  for  the  obligation  to  obey  ?  We  are  referred 
to  the  exalted  and  inviolable  character,  or  the  benefit-produc- 
ing energy  of  this  same  law.  And,  finally,  if  we  crave  an 
ideal,  according  to  which  we  may  persistently  and  progres- 
sively shape  our  conduct  in  the  interests  of  the  perfect  moral 
life,  we  are  bidden  to  devote  ourselves  unflinchingly  (and, 
sometimes,  without  regard,  it  would  appear,  to  ourselves  or 
to  other  human  interests)  to  the  keeping  of  the  Moral  Law. 
For,  otherwise,  the  great  Moral  World  Order,  impersonal  and 
one  would  suppose,  blind  as  it  is,  will  grind  us  small ;  it  will, 
at  best,  somehow  sadly  put  us  out  of  sorts,  if  we  do  not  ob- 
serve its  sacred  formulas. 

Now  for  my  part,  I  have  less  respect  for  this  fetish  of 
"  Law "  or  "-  Order "  (when  personified  and  spelled  with  a 
capital,  although  ^represented  as  impersonal)  in  ethics  than 
I  have  for  the  corresponding  fetish  called  "  Nature "  in 
physics.  It  would  seem  that  a  sentient  being  might  reason- 
ably entertain  certain  vague  fears  and  hopes  that  are  aroused 
while  in  contemplation  of  a  system  of  mysterious  impersonal 
entities  and  forces.  But  to  ask  a  thinking  being  to  have  a 
moral  respect  for  any  merely  impersonal  formula  or  to  recog- 
nize such  a  formula  as  a  rightful  source  of  authority  and  of 
binding  obligation,  is  to  ask  for  an  irrational  rather  than  a 
rational  procedure.  Our  demand  upon  every  ethical  theory, 
however,  goes  much  further  than  this.  For  we  are  seeking 
some  help  out  of  a  dilemma  caused  by  a  series  of  painful, 
practical  antitheses,  all  of  which  originate  in  personality  and 
have  reference  solely  to  personal  relations.  It  is  difficult  to 
believe  that  real  help  is  to  be  found  from  any  manipulation  of 
conceptions  that  are  impersonal  and,  therefore,  foreign  to  the 
interests  with  which  ethics  deals. 

That  all  the  offers  of  help  which  Legalism  in  Ethics  makes 
are  really  unavailing  will  the  more  readily  appear  after  what 
has  already  been  said  in  the  chapters  on  Moral  Law  and  on 


500  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

the  Universality  of  Moral  Principles.  Indeed,  these  previous 
discussions  render  unnecessary  in  this  connection  anything 
more  than  two  or  three  brief  observations.  Of  the  two  forms 
taken  by  the  theory  that  the  essential  nature  of  the  right  is 
to  be  described  as  obedience  to  some  impersonal  norm  or  law, 
one  has  already  been  considered  in  detail.  This  form  seeks 
to  place  its  conceptions  of  moral  criteria,  sanctions,  and 
ideals,  upon  a  basis  of  experience.  The  other  form  appeals 
to  some  statement  that  can  lay  claim  to  be  established  as  a 
rational  intuition.  In  the  one  case,  the  resulting  conception 
of  "The  Moral  Law"  is  empirical  and  historical  in  respect 
of  its  origin  and  of  the  proofs  to  be  advanced  in  favor  of  its 
validity.  In  the  other  case,  the  conception  is  said  to  be  a 
priori ;  and  it  refuses  to  appeal  to  experience,  because  it  does 
not  admit  the  need  of  making  so  uncertain  and  doubtful  an 
appeal. 

It  has  already  been  clearly  shown  that  the  nature  of  all 
empirical  laws  and  principles  respecting  judgments  of 
ethical  value  is  purely  subjective  and  personal ;  and  that 
the  objectivity  which  they  appear  to  have  —  the  qualifications 
which  impart  to  them  the  character  of  "  external  imponents  " 
—  is  in  its  origin  also  subjective  and  personal.  This  form  of 
Legalism  in  Ethics  amounts  then  to  saying  that  mankind,  in 
its  moral  evolution,  has  somehow  embodied  in  its  social  or- 
ganizations certain  ways  of  behavior,  and  types  of  character, 
which  actually  excite  the  feelings  of  obligation  and  of  ap- 
probation ;  and  which,  therefore,  appear  to  have  a  right  to 
command  the  will,  with  the  majority  of  the  individuals  form- 
ing these  social  organizations.  The  criteria,  sanctions,  and 
ideals  of  conduct  are  in  this  way  left,  just  where  they  ought 
to  be  left  by  all  merely  descriptive  and  historical  ethics, — 
namely,  in  the  consciousness  of  the  multitude  of  the  individ- 
uals that  respond  to  the  stimulus  of  external  conditions,  with 
the  appropriate  ethical  feelings  and  ideas.  Nothing  is  learned 
in  this  way,  however,  as  to  how  the  source,  the  rational  justi- 


LEGALISM  IN  ETHICS  601 

fication,  the  profounder  significance  or  final  purpose,  of  this 
experience  of  mankind  must  be  conceived  of,  in  relation  to 
Ultimate  Reality.  Somehow  or  other  the  fact  emerges  that 
man  finds  himself  bound  by  one  side  of  his  nature  to 
principles  of  conduct  that  do  not  get  themselves  approved 
as  by  any  means  wholly  favorable  to  another  side.  The 
moral  norm  is  his  own  unaided,  unbidden  construction ;  but 
in  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  is  his  own  construction  it  com- 
mands him  as  though  it  had  celestial  authority  and  celestial 
sanctions.  It  rises  gradually  in  his  consciousness ;  and  yet  it 
seems  to  rise  above  him,  and  largely  to  contradict  that  external 
Nature  of  which  he  is,  physically  considered,  so  insignificant  a 
part,  as  well  as  to  divide  and  set  at  hopeless  odds  against  itself 
his  own  selfhood,  or  internal  nature. 

The  case  is  somewhat  different  with  the  other  form  of 
Legalism  in  Ethics.  This  theory  asserts  that  the  moral  law 
is  revealed  in  human  consciousness,  and  in  such  manner  as  to 
be  independent  of  any  form  of  historical  or  experiential  proof. 
The  Moral  Law  has  the  force,  it  maintains,  of  an  unquestioned 
rational  principle ;  whose  peculiarity,  however,  consists  in  this, 
that  it  does  not  simply  offer  a  statement  of  truth  which  has 
demonstrable  and  universal  certainty,  but  that  it  also  makes 
upon  the  will  a  demand  for  obedience  which  is  equally  ex- 
empted from  all  the  questionings  of  human  scepticism.  The 
moral  law  is  thus,  on  account  of  its  origin  being  purely  in 
reason  and  without  any  admixture  of  empirical  elements,  both 
an  apodictic  proposition  and  a  "  categorical  imperative." 

That  we  cannot  speak  of  any  one  all-inclusive  and  complete 
moral  law,  any  proposition  that  shall  summarize  all  the 
essential  judgments  of  mankind  with  respect  to  ethical  values 
and  all  the  maxims  esteemed  right  for  realizing  these  values 
in  a  virtuous  life,  has  already  been  demonstrated  in  great 
detail.  The  very  nature  of  ethical  judgment,  the  plainly 
heterogeneous  character  of  the  moral  code  accepted  by  the 
best  judges,  the  actual  course  of  man's  ethical  evolution,  show 


502  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

that  this  conception  of  an  intuitive  all-embracing  moral 
principle,  as  set  into  the  original  constitution  of  human 
reason,  or  even  as  having  evolved  itself  in  the  progressive 
formation  of  human  reason,  is  a  chimera.  Even  more  un- 
warrantable have  those  attempts  been  found  to  be  which 
disregard  the  personal  influences  and  interests  involved  in 
all  moral  values ;  and  which  repeat  the  vain  proposal  to  free 
the  mind  from  its  natural,  necessary,  and  rational  tendency, 
to  consider  all  these  values  as  rendered  unthinkable  and 
wholly  without  value  as  soon  as  they  are  treated  from  the 
point  of  view  of  impersonal  laws  and  impersonal  ends. 

Our  contention  against  the  possibility  of  an  a  ^priori  im- 
personal law  as  offering  the  solution  of  the  more  difficult 
problems  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct  may  fitly  be  illustrated 
by  a  few  words  of  criticism  of  Kant's  attempt  in  this  direc- 
tion. In  his  profoundly  philosophical  mind  the  inevitable 
connection  between  ethics,  on  the  one  hand,  and  epistemology 
and  metaphysics  on  the  other  hand,  is  obvious  and  impressive 
from  the  very  first.  To  found  more  securely  the  principles  of 
conduct  and  the  postulates  and  faiths  of  religion  was  his  pur- 
pose from  the  beginning  of  his  critical  examination  of  human 
reason.  His  criticism  of  so-called  "  pure  reason,"  or  man's 
cognitive  faculties  so  far  as  they  are  native. and  constitutional, 
leaves  these  faculties  embarrassed  and  thwarted  wholly,  when- 
ever they  attempt  to  extend  knowledge  beyond  the  confines 
of  phenomena.  Within  these  confines  the  same  faculties 
operate  to  give  to  all  kinds  of  experience,  both  constitutive 
and  regulative  forms  that  are  themselves  quite  independent 
of  experience.  And  when  Kant  comes  to  treat  of  the  moral 
ideas,  he  demands  for  them,  too,  an  origin  that  is  not  empir- 
ical but  wholly  supersensuous  ;  he  remains  true  to  the  presup- 
positions of  the  Platonic  ethics.  He  is  even  forced  into  the 
position  where  the  very  moral  worth  of  every  right  action 
consists  in  its  being  done  against  resistance.  Nothing  but 
a  bare  law,  unrelated  to  experience  and  arising  in  a  world 


LEGALISM  IN  ETHICS  603 

quite  apart  from  the  one  which  we  know,  is  left  of  the  essence 
of  morality.  This  abstract  formula,  thus  derived  by  a  critique 
of  man's  moral  consciousness  and  independently  of  all  empi- 
rical data,  is  called  by  Kant  the  "  Fundamental  Law  of  the 
Pure  Practical  Reason."  And  it  is  stated  by  its  author  in 
the  chief  one  of  its  several  slightly  different  forms,  as  follows  : 
"  Act  so  that  the  maxim  of  thy  will  can  always  at  the  same 
time  hold  good  as  a  principle  of  universal  legislation." 

Further  examination  of  this  Law,  to  which  Kant  gives  a 
perfectly  unquestioned  authority  and  an  absolutely  universal 
applicability,  and  which  he  conceives  of  as  a  mandate  of 
reason  entirely  free  from  all  considerations  as  to  the  con- 
sequences of  conduct  and  as  to  the  feelings  with  which  men 
unavoidably  contemplate  those  consequences,  shows  that  it  is 
neither  a  priori^  in  any  strict  meaning  of  the  term,  nor 
properly  speaking  impersonal.  Indeed,  whatever  this  Law 
has  which  commends  itself  to  the  human  feelings  of  obliga- 
tion, or  to  the  reasonable  judgment  of  man,  is  dependent 
upon  a  vast  and  variable  evolution  of  human  experience ;  and 
all  this  experience  consists  in  forms  of  intercourse  between 
persons,  and  in  readjustments  of  opinions  and  practices  due 
to  such  intercourse.  That  is  to  say,  all  the  validity  which  the 
so-called  a  priori  and  impersonal  formula  possesses  comes 
from  centuries  of  the  use  of  human  powers  of  reflection  upon 
ethical  and  social  phenomena. 

This  criticism  of  Kant's  "fundamental  law  of  the  pure 
practical  reason,"  might,  if  it  were  necessary,  be  supported 
by  a  detailed  examination  of  the  very  terms  in  which  the  so- 
called  law  is  stated.  Every  word  of  it  palpitates  with  warm, 
concrete,  human  interests  that  appeal  to  the  emotions  com- 
mon to  humanity,  and  to  the  experience  of  men  with  the 
consequences  of  their  different  forms  of  conduct.  How  other- 
wise is  the  possibility  (the  "  can  always  ")  of  applying  the 
maxim  of  my  will  to  others,  to  be  tested  ?  How  otherwise 
can  the  adaptability  (the  "  holding  good  ")  of  the  rule  of  one 


504  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

person's  conduct  to  the  case  of  others  be  presupposed,  devoid 
as  it  would  be,  of  a  parity  of  ethical  experiences  and  of  a  cer- 
tain uniformity  of  results  from  similar  forms  of  conduct? 
And  is  it  not  so  self-evident  as  scarcely  to  need  exposition, 
that  any  absolutely  unexceptionable  law  ("principle  of  uni- 
versal legislation  ")  over  all  human  beings  must  take  account 
of  the  various  kinds  of  concrete  relations  in  which  all  human 
beings  stand  to  each  other,  under  the  different  forms  of  social 
organization  ?  If  it  were  worth  the  while  in  the  present  con- 
nection, it  could  be  shown  that  all  of  Kant's  own  exposition 
of  this  law  answers  these  and  allied  questions  in  a  manner 
distinctly  unfavorable  to  his  claim  of  a  strictly  a  'priori  char- 
acter ;  in  a  word,  he  cannot  himself  regard  a  Moral  Law  as 
free  from  all  dependence  upon  common  and  wide-spreading, 
and  even  upon  concrete  and  individual,  forms  of  human 
personal  experience. 

Were  such  attempts  as  that  of  Kant  much  more  highly 
satisfactory  from  the  standpoint  of  universal  reason,  they 
would  still  remain  of  comparatively  little  practical  import- 
ance or  even  convenience.  For  taken  in  its  full  import  every 
such  "  Moral  Law "  is  impossible  of  application  to  the  solu- 
tion of  concrete  cases  of  conscience,  not  to  say  conflicts  of 
duty.  How  can  the  plain  man  discover  whether  the  particular 
maxim  of  his  will,  in  a  given  instance,  is  such  as  to  "  hold 
good  as  a  principle  of  universal  legislation."  Instead  of  its 
being  true,  as  its  author  asserts,^  that  in  this  way  "the 
commonest  intelligence  can  easily  and  without  hesitation 
see  what  .  .  .  requires  to  be  done,"  quite  the  reverse  is  true. 
Nothing  could  be  more  complicated  and  doubtful  of  issue  than 
this  appeal  to  fitness  for  "  universal  legislation."  And  noth- 
ing else  so  much  requires,  as  well  as  produces  elevation  of 
mind,  as  to  consider  carefully  the  nature  of  each  thing,  and 
thus  —  to  quote  the  wisdom  of  Marcus  Aurelius  —  decide, 

1  Critique  of  Practical  Reason,   Part  First,  Book  I,  §   VIII,  Theorem  IV, 
Remark  II. 


LEGALISM  IN  ETHICS  506 

"What  virtue  1  have  need  of  with  respect  to  it,  such  as 
gentleness,  manliness,  truth,  fidelity,  simplicity,  content- 
ment, and  the  rest." 

There  is  much,  however,  in  this  lofty  maintaining  of  the 
claims  of  universal  reason  to  have  somewhere  hidden  in  its 
depths  the  eternal  truths  and  unchanging  principles  of  all 
morality,  which  excites  the  enthusiasm  and  commands  the 
respect  of  the  reflective  mind.  The  most  unchanging  truths, 
we  feel,  are  moral.  The  profoundest  insights  into  the  heart 
of  Reality  are  born  of  the  ethical  nature.  Man's  kinship 
with  the  Infinite  and  the  Eternal  is  most  intimate  and  strong, 
only  when  he  has  arrived  at  the  maturity  of  a  moral  self- 
consciousness.  Things  may  be  in  an  unceasing  flux,  and  all 
the  physical  structures  of  human  skill  may  crumble  away. 
Even  the  elements  may  melt  with  fervent  heat,  and  the 
heavens  themselves  be  rolled  up  like  a  parchment  scroll. 
But  the  obligations  of  duty  can  never  be  abated ;  the  good 
of  righteous  living  does  not  fade ;  the  moral  ideal  loses  none 
of  its  awful  beauty,  or  of  its  unconditioned  value.  Over 
and  beyond  the  last  dim  and  fading  vision  of  the  things  that 
minister  to  a  sensuous  good,  there  rises  the  spiritual  vision  of 
a  good  that  is  lasting  and  supreme.  And  in  this  Good  virtue 
is  not  the  least,  but  rather  the  most  important  factor ;  for  it 
is  the  Ideal  which  lures  on  and  encourages  and  commands 
the  moral  consciousness  of  humanity. 

This  the  philosopher,  enamored  of  his  own  rational  con- 
struction, has  always  felt  and  spoken  regarding  his  Ideal  of 
the  morally  Good.  That  profound  stirring  of  feeling,  which 
Kant  designates  "  respect  for  the  Law,"  is  itself  a  fact ;  and 
so  is  also  the  movement  of  imagination  and  thought  which 
accompanies  the  feeling.  These  facts  show  in  an  undoubted 
empirical  way  that,  if  not  otherwise,  at  least  in  his  moral 
nature  man  is  — 

"  Formed  to  rise,  reach  at,  if  not  grasp  and  gain 
The  good  beyond  him,  —  which  attempt  is  growth." 


506  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

It  is  the  source,  the  significance,  the  value,  the  warrant,  and 
the  outcome,  of  this  "  formation "  to  which  men  generally 
respond,  in  some  measure  at  least,  as  they  are  related  to  the 
sum-total  of  Reality,  which  offer  to  the  philosophy  of  con- 
duct its  ultimate  problems.  These  problems,  which  Utilita- 
rianism in  Ethics  disregards,  are  not  solved  by  Legalism  in 
Ethics.  But  the  latter  theory  emphasizes  and  reinforces 
them  as  the  former  theory  does  not.  We  therefore  turn  with 
an  increased  sense  of  their  important  and  pressing  character 
to  consider  other  attempts  at  their  solution. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

IDEALISM  IN  ETHICS 

It  is  obvious  from  the  previous  course  of  our  examination 
into  the  problems  of  ethics  that  the  attempt  to  solve  them, 
if  this  attempt  is  carried  through  consistently,  must  termi- 
nate in  some  form  of  an  idealistic  theory.  Indeed,  all  the 
facts,  opinions,  and  tendencies  with  which  the  philosophy  of 
conduct  is  concerned  have  reference  to  human  ideals;  and 
only  in  so  far  as  the  average  "plain  man,"  or  even  the  hypo- 
thetical "primitive  man,"  is  conceived  of  as  a  creator  of 
ideals  can  he  be  considered  moral  in  any  tenable  meaning  of 
this  latter  word.  Thus  it  was  found  necessary  to  introduce 
a  corresponding  phrase  into  the  very  first  preliminary  de- 
scription of  that  sphere  of  human  experiences  which  ethics 
claims  as  peculiarly  its  own.  This  sphere  was  defined  to 
be  the  sphere  of  conduct  not  as  mere  fact  of  behavior,  but  of 
conduct  "as  related  to  a  rational  ideal."  In  the  analysis 
of  the  Moral  Self  also,  it  was  shown  how  indispensable  to 
moral  life  and  development  are  those  activities  of  thought 
and  imagination  which  result  in  the  formation  of  the  moral 
ideals;  that  these  ideals  themselves  are  indubitable  psychic 
facts,  actual  forms  of  the  functioning  of  human  minds ;  and 
that  they  are,  moreover,  very  potent  and  influential  facts, 
which  no  student  of  human  history,  ethically  considered, 
can  safely  overlook. 

It  was  further  discovered  that  the  different  cardinal  vir- 
tues, although  they  are  actual  forms  of  that  personal  life 
which  men  agree  to  call  good,  are  all  conceived  and  prac- 


508  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

tised  under  the  guidance  of  certain  typical  notions  of  what 
a  person  ought  to  be.  In  their  superior  or  more  perfect 
manifestations  they  are  constructs  of  thought  and  imagina- 
tion—  each  one  being  some  phase  or  aspect  of  that  moral 
selfhood  which  represents  for  the  ethical  aspiration  of  the 
individual  the  goal  of  his  striving.  To  try  to  be  "a  good 
man  "  is  the  naive,  popular  way  of  expressing  the  aspiration 
and  the  effort  to  attain  a  moral  ideal.  And  when,  by  the 
further  process  of  abstraction  and  generalizing,  the  most 
comprehensive  conceptions  of  morality  are  evolved  in  human 
consciousness,  this  idealizing  tendency,  and  the  dependence 
of  human  conduct  and  ethical  development  upon  the  ten- 
dency, are  still  further  illustrated  and  enforced.  The  con- 
ceptions of  a  universal  Moral  Law,  and  of  a  System  of  moral 
Principles  whose  sanctions  and  values  and  authority  extend 
over  all  men,  if  not  over  all  personal  beings,  are  of  an  ex- 
ceedingly abstract  and  non-empirical  character.  Indeed,  so 
purely  abstract  are  they  that  the  desirability  was  strongly 
felfc  of  calling  even  the  philosophical  mind  back  from  its 
high-flying  excursions  to  consider  again  more  carefully  the 
details  of  the  ground  from  which  it  took  its  flight,  and  the 
probable  construction  of  the  territory  on  which  it  would  be 
obliged  to  alight. 

And,  finally,  our  empirical  investigation  found  itself  con- 
fronted with  a  puzzle  of  antithetic  positions  and  opinions,  of 
inconsistent  and  contradictory  demands  upon  the  strivings 
and  active  life  of  the  mind.  This  was  the  puzzle  of  human 
moral  life  —  of  an  existence  in  which  each  individual  feels 
himself  bound  to  seek  a  kind  of  welfare  which  is  so  often 
incompatible  with  the  cravings  of  his  pleasure-loving  nature, 
and  in  which  he  thinks  it  reasonable  and  even  obligatory  to 
legislate,  in  thought  and  heart  at  least,  for  all  his  fellow 
men  for  all  time,  and  under  all  circumstances.  On  turning 
to  the  various  schools  of  ethical  theory  for  the  solution  of  these 
problems  of  conduct,  they  were  all  found  either  to  admit  or  to 


IDEALISM  IN  ETHICS  609 

emphasize  the  essential  importance  of  the  Moral  Ideal.  The 
first  of  these  schools  to  be  examined,  the  Utilitarian,  did 
indeed  change  the  character  of  this  ideal.  For  the  ideal  of 
a  Moral  Self  living  in  accordance  with  his  conceptions  of  a 
virtuous  life  in  social  relations  with  other  selves,  Utilita- 
rianism in  Ethics,  substitutes  the  ideal  of  a  Sentient  Self, 
shrewdly  or  even  wisely  calculating  the  conditions  and 
consequences  of  conduct  as  affecting  a  certain  sum-total  of 
happiness.  But  the  criteria,  the  sanctions,  and  the  ends  of 
conduct  are  still  placed  outside  of,  and  above  the  actual,  in 
the  realm  of  what  ought  to  be.  And  although  the  ideal  of 
the  lower  and  grosser  forms  of  Hedonism  is  itself  relatively 
low  and  gross,  the  ideals  of  the  more  refined  modern  forms 
of  Utilitarianism  are  among  the  most  difficult  to  frame  by 
human  thought  and  imagination.  For  they  require  the  mind 
to  picture  a  condition  in  which  happiness  and  good  conduct 
shall  be  actually  related  in  such  a  way  as  that  seeking  the 
former  will  afford  a  sure  criterion  and  rational  sanction  for, 
if  not  a  goal  identical  with  the  latter.  This  is  a  hard  task 
for  the  idealizing  faculty  to  combine  with  the  cool  judgment 
which  retains  a  strong  grasp  upon  the  actual  forces  and  laws 
that  have  to  do  with  physical  nature  and  with  human  society. 
Certainly  no  actual  form  of  existence  sustains  any  very  close 
resemblance  to  the  ideal  of  any  form  of  hedonistic  theory. 

Those  forms  of  rationalism  in  ethics  which  resemble  the 
attempt  of  Kant  to  derive  from  the  so-called  practical  reason, 
by  a  critical  process,  some  general  proposition  that  may 
demand  unhesitating  and  unquestioning  acceptance  and  obe- 
dience, certainly  tax  sufficiently  our  deference  to  human 
ideals.  Indeed,  they  have  a  superb  confidence  in  the  results 
of  the  reflective  thinking  and  lofty  imaginings  of  the  individ- 
ual mind  of  the  philosopher;  this  confidence  more  than  meets 
the  demands  of  a  tenable  idealistic  theory.  This  rationalis- 
tic ideal  must  be  some  principle,  that  may  be  pronounced 
obligatory  upon  all  rational  beings,  even  upon  God  himself, 


610  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

and  infallibly  applied  to  particular  cases  of  conscience  by 
any  plain  man's  judgment,  if  he  be  a  "  man  of  good  will. " 
No  more  noble  and  inspiring  exercise  of  human  ideality  than 
this  could  possibly  be  imagined.  But  alas !  when  tested  by 
experience  the  facts  of  experience  do  not  support  the  theory. 
The  dream  of  rational  Legalism  is  quite  as  beautiful  as  that 
of  the  most  refined  Hedonism;  and  it  is,  ethically  con- 
sidered, much  more  stimulating  and  ennobling.  But  the 
actuality  of  man's  moral  nature  and  ethico-social  develop- 
ment do  not  justify  the  dream.  Its  very  existence  in  the 
human  mind  gives  a  grave  additional  emphasis  to  the  con- 
clusion that  only  as  man  is  an  idealist  is  he  a  moral  being; 
and  that  all  satisfactory  solutions  of  ethical  questions  must 
make  large  demands  upon  the  idealizing  activities  of  the 
human  mind. 

Thus  does  the  problem  of  conduct  begin,  indeed,  with 
the  attempt  at  a  purely  empirical  investigation,  and  with 
the  promise  to  regard  only  such  facts  of  ethical  import  as 
the  sciences  of  psychology  and  anthropology  appear  to  justify 
incontestably.  But  the  investigation  leads  on  irresistibly 
to  the  speculative  contemplation  of  the  highest  and  most 
comprehensive  of  human  ideals.  For  these  ideals  them- 
selves are  found  to  be  —  however  fitfully  and  fragmentarily 
constructed  by  the  multitude  of  men  —  the  most  momentous 
and  influential  of  the  phenomena  of  men's  moral  develop- 
ment. In  spite  of  our  earlier  warning  (see  p.  9  f. ) 
against  making  ethics,  as  Professor  Sidgwick  charged  Mr. 
Spencer  with  doing,  the  science  of  the  "double  ideal,"  it 
appears  now  that,  in  close  connection  with  the  study  of  the 
life  of  the  Moral  Self  in  its  manifold  relations  with  society, 
the  mind  is  almost  inevitably  carried  away  toward  a  sort  of 
triply  ideal  Utopia.  In  this  Utopia  all  ideal  good  is  to  be 
realized  —  the  good  of  happiness,  the  good  of  beauty,  and  the 
good  of  morality. 

Some  form  of  Idealism  in  Ethics  is,  then,  the  only  consis- 


IDEALISM  IN  ETHICS  611 

tent  and  tenable  ethical  theory.  Indeed,  I  am  quite  ready 
to  say  that  there  is  possible  only  one  form  of  ethical  theory 
—  namely,  some  form  of  Idealism.  But  such  a  conclusion 
as  this,  while  it  follows  from  what  has  already  been  dis- 
covered to  be  true  in  the  domain  of  ethics,  does  not  afford 
the  further  truth  which  we  are  seeking.  It  suggests  that 
truth,  however;  and  I  will  now  state  it  in  the  form  of  an 
alternative  hypothesis :  —  Unless  our  human  Ideals  —  and  I 
am  now  speaking  of  the  ethical  ideals,  the  ideals  of  moral 
personality  and  of  a  society  of  morally  good  persons  —  have 
their  ground,  their  sanction,  and  their  goal,  in  the  nature  of 
Ultimate  Reality,  they  are  merely  subjective,  without  rational 
ground,  or  sanction,  and  without  sure  promise  of  a  satisfying 
end.  In  other  words,  that  Unity  of  Reality  which  science 
calls  Nature  (including  in  this  term  the  nature  and  evolution 
of  the  human  race),  and  which  philosophy  calls  the  Absolute 
or  the  World -Ground,  must  be  so  conceived  of  as  to  be  the 
source,  the  authority,  and  the  guarantor,  of  man's  ethical  de- 
velopment, or  else  all  ethical  theory  must  be  left,  where  a  care- 
fully restricted  empirical  and  historical  investigation  leaves 
it,  in  a  condition  of  distracting  and  hopeless  antitheses. 
But  I  am  anticipating  a  conclusion  which  will  more  fitly  be 
reached  by  slower  approaches  under  the  guidance  of  patient 
reflective  thinking. 

Idealism  in  ethics,  like  Utilitarianism  in  ethics,  has 
certain  definite  answers  which  it  must  propose  to  the 
subordinate  problems  of  conduct  before  it  can  claim  to 
have  established  itself  upon  an  empirical  basis.  These  are 
elicited  by  questions  like  the  three  following:  (1)  With 
whose  ideal  does  the  nature  of  the  right  in  conduct  and  the 
good  in  character  correspond  ?  Can  the  functioning  of  any 
individual's  intellect  and  imagination,  "plain  man"  or  phil- 
osopher, be  trusted  to  furnish  the  criteria,  the  sanctions, 
and  the  end,  of  morality  in  such  a  way  as  to  entitle  its  result 
to  claim  authority  for  all  human  beings  under  every  form  of 


612  PHILOSOPHY   OF  CONDUCT 

social  organization  ?  (2)  When  is  this  trustworthy  ideal  of 
conduct  actually  produced  by  human  mental  activity  ?  Does 
it  originate  in  the  presence  of  every  particular  piece  of  con- 
duct, or  every  special  conflict  of  duty,  as  a  sort  of  envisage- 
ment  of  the  rational  and  the  universal  in  the  concrete  and 
individual  conscious  state  ?  Or  has  the  ideal  rather  the 
nature  of  a  result  from  a  long  process  of  evolution,  during 
which  it  slowly  emerges  in  the  consciousness  of  the  race,  or 
at  the  end  of  which  it  suddenly  springs  into  the  mind  of  some 
member  of  the  race  who  has  a  genius  for  morality  ?  (3) 
What  kind  of  an  ideal  is  this  which  is  said  somehow  to  con- 
tain within  itself  the  rational  account  of  the  criteria,  the 
sanctions,  and  the  goal  of  human  conduct  ?  Psychologically 
considered,  is  it  chiefly  a  suggestion  of  the  emotional  nature, 
an  ideal  of  faith,  hope,  and  aspiration ;  or  is  it  a  pure  prod- 
uct of  processes  of  ratiocination,  or  a  principle  of  judgment 
adapted  to  regulate  the  activity  of  the  rational  powers  when- 
ever they  are  applied  to  the  problems  of  conduct;  or  is  it, 
the  rather,  something  discoverable  only  by  a  historical 
generalization  based  upon  centuries  of  racial  experience ;  or 
is  it  not,  perhaps,  a  combination  of  feeling  and  intellect 
working  according  to  rules  prescribed  by  the  very  constitu- 
tion of  the  human  mind  ? 

To  many  of  the  inquiries  subordinate  to  the  three  ques- 
tions just  raised,  as  well  as  to  the  three  questions  them- 
selves, more  or  less  satisfactory  answers  have  already  been 
given.  These  answers  have  shown  in  large  measure  what 
shape  any  idealistic  theory  of  morality  must  take,  if  it 
wishes  to  found  itself  upon  the  psychological  and  historical 
"data  of  ethics."  But  brief  summaries  of  the  conclusions 
already  reached  by  the  psychological  and  historical  method 
will  prepare  the  way  for  that  more  speculative  extension  of 
the  idealistic  theory  which,  while  it  bases  itself  upon  other 
facts  that  are  closely  allied  with  these  data,  extends  the 
conclusions  of  ethics  over  into  the  domain  of  a  theory  of 


IDEALISM  IN  ETHICS  613 

Reality  that  takes  into  its  account  also  the  aesthetical  and 
religious  nature  of  man.  For  even  in  those  ideals  of  his 
which  depart  furthest  from  his  experience  with  concrete 
realities,  man  cannot  wholly  disregard  the  facts.  And  no 
wise  man,  no  reflective  thinker  on  the  problem  of  conduct, 
would  wish  to  disregard  them.  But  there  are  other  classes 
of  facts  than  those  which  concern  man's  experience  with 
concrete  realities ;  and  these  are  the  facts  which  solicit  and 
require  the  mind  to  form  ideals.  There  are  other  ideals 
than  the  ideals  of  morality;  there  are  the  ideals  of  art  and 
of  religion.  These  aesthetical  and  religious  ideals  are  so 
involved  with  the  moral  ideals  that,  in  fact,  the  experience 
which  creates  and  supports  all  three  cannot  be  wholly  sepa- 
rated. And  thus  the  need  is  manifest  that  the  aesthetical, 
and  especially  the  religious  nature,  should  be  consulted  in 
connection  with  the  moral  nature,  when  it  is  proposed  to 
construct  such  a  theory  of  Reality  as  shall  satisfy  the  entire 
being  of  man. 

Concerning  moral  ideals,  as  affording  the  criteria,  the 
sanctions,  and  the  goal  of  conduct  for  the  individual  and  for 
the  race,  the  following  claims  of  Intuitionism  —  a  form  of 
Idealism  in  Ethics  —  have  already  been  found  to  be  true: 
First,  in  multitudes  of  cases,  in  all  forms  of  social  organiza- 
tion, the  average  adult  promptly  and  apparently  intuitively 
decides  for  himself  what  is  right  and  wrong  in  conduct,  by 
comparing  the  concrete  action  with  his  own  ideal.  He  also 
habitually  judges  the  conduct  of  other  men  to  be  meritorious 
and  worthy  of  being  rewarded  accordingly,  or  the  opposite, 
by  comparing  it,  too,  with  the  same  ideal.  If  the  judge  be 
a  man  of  particularly  "liberal  mind,"  he  can  make  certain 
allowances;  he  can  at  times  remember  and  take  into  his 
account  the  patent  fact  that  men  and  circumstances  differ 
and  that  no  one  man  ought  to  make  himself  the  measure  of 
all  things  moral.  But  after  all,  this  amounts  simply  to 
saying  that  the  liberal  mind  is  able  and  willing  to  picture 


514  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

the  ideal  of  Selfhood  which  it  has  made  its  own,  in  a  some- 
what more  than  ordinarily  facile  and,  as  it  were,  elastic 
way.  Every  judge  and  critic  of  another's  conduct,  in  his 
very  judgment  of  others,  still  holds  fast  to  his  own  ideal; 
his  real  inquiry  is :  How  should  I  feel  and  think  that  I  ought 
to  act,  if  only  I  were  not  I  in  these  circumstances  that  are 
mine,  but  if  I  were  he  in  those  other  circumstances  that  are 
his  ?  It  would,  however,  be  contrary  to  fact  to  affirm  that 
men  at  all  frequently  deliberate  whether  this  or  that  way  of 
behavior  will  produce  the  maximum  of  human  happiness;  or 
whether  the  particular  action  accords  with  some  maxim  that 
can  be  made  to  hold  good  as  a  principle  of  universal  legis- 
lation. Indeed,  more  frequently,  perhaps,  the  multitude  do 
not  deliberate  problems  of  conduct  at  all.  To  this  extent, 
at  any  rate,  the  simplest  form  of  that  idealistic  theory  which 
is  called  "  intuitive  "  seems  to  correspond  with  the  facts  of 
experience. 

And,  second,  this  intuitive  application  of  the  moral  ideal  to 
problems  of  conduct,  this  prompt  and  seemingly  infallible 
activity  of  so-called  conscience,  in  multitudes  of  cases 
carries  the  entire  being  of  the  man  along  with  itself.  Thus 
the  man  in  action  is  not  a  divided  man.  Or  if  he  is  a 
divided  man,  the  division  of  his  being  is  not  over  the  moral 
problem;  but  is  rather  a  division  over  some  question  of 
expediency.  The  problem  of  the  man  who  doubts  about 
conduct  is  usually  hedonistic  and  not  strictly  ethical.  Cases 
of  doubt  customarily  arise  as  follows :  The  individual  has  a 
feeling  of  obligation  which  binds  him  to  some  definite  course 
of  action ;  this  is  the  course  which  he  judges  would  be  right, 
while  not  to  follow  it  would  be  wrong;  and  he  also  experi- 
ences in  the  same  direction  certain  elementary  and  primary 
impulses  of  will.  If,  however,  action  does  not  follow,  then 
the  feeling  of  a  divided  Self  emerges ;  doubt  as  to  what  is 
duty  creeps  on  apace  and  grows  with  deliberation.  When  the 
man  begins  to  reason  with  himself,  the  seemingly  infallible 


IDEALISM  IN  ETHICS  615 

authority  of  conscience  becomes  obscured ;  the  subjective  ideal 
no  longer  seems  to  afford  the  sure  criterion,  the  sufficient 
sanction,  the  worthy  end,  of  the  particular  conduct.  Indeed, 
a  conflict  of  duties  may  arise,  according  as  one  course  of  con- 
duct appears  to  satisfy  one  phase  of  this  ideal,  and  another 
different  and  antagonistic  course  makes  its  appeal  to  a  differ- 
ent phase  of  the  total  complex  ideal.  The  seemingly  infal- 
lible nature  of  the  moral  standard  as  a  commitment  of  the 
entire  man  to  one  line  of  action,  gives  place  to  a  condition  in 
which  feeling  contends  with  judgment;  or  the  more  imme- 
diate emotion  and  intellectual  estimate  are  confronted  with  a 
contradictory  conclusion  that  results  from  a  course  of  argu- 
ment with  one's  self  or  with  some  other  person. 

Such  complex  and  conflicting  phenomena  have  very  nat- 
urally operated  to  divide  the  members  of  the  Intuitional 
School  into  subordinate  classes.  Some  intuitionists  have 
given  precedence  to  the  immediacy  of  feeling,  and  have 
accordingly  developed  a  theory  of  "  moral  sense  "  or  —  more 
particularly  —  a  "  taste  theory. "  Others  have  relied  rather  on 
intellectual  processes  and  have  mistaken  the  prompt  mental 
recognition  which  follows  according  to  well-known  psycho- 
logical laws  from  the  habitual  ways  of  carrying  through 
these  processes,  for  the  immediate  dicta  of  practical  reason. 
The  ideally  right  is  thus  made  a  matter  of  "  insight "  or  of 
"perception,"  after  the  analogy  of  our  most  obviously  imme- 
diate cognitions  of  material  objects  and  their  relations. 

Still  other  writers  on  ethics  have  emphasized  the  need 
which  the  average  man  must  acknowledge  of  help  from  those 
of  his  own  species  who  have  the  gifts  and  the  culture  of  the 
moral  philosopher.  "Intuitions  "  of  that  which  is  infallibly 
and  universally  entitled  to  be  called  right  may,  therefore,  be 
had  by  the  human  mind ;  but  in  order  to  reach  them,  long 
and  severe  processes  of  reflective  and  analytic  thinking  must 
be  gone  through ;  —  somewhat,  for  example,  after  the  pattern 
of  what  is  necessary  to  attain  the  geometer's  intuition  of  the 


516  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

abstract  geometrical  properties  of  space,  or  the  physicist's 
intuition  of  the  indestructibility  of  energy  or  of  matter. 
Such  a  so-called  "  intuition  "  is  plainly  about  as  far  as  pos- 
sible removed  from  that  envisagement  of  the  concrete,  indi- 
vidual object,  of  which  sense-perception  is  the  type.  It  is 
none  the  less,  however,  believed  to  have  a  superior  excellence 
on  account  of  its  alleged  a  priori  character.  It  is  definitively 
a  rational  intuition,  and  therefore  necessary  and  universally 
applicable.  And  just  as  all  men  have,  or  may  develop,  the 
ideal  of  a  perfect  triangle,  or  of  those  parallel  lines  that 
(unlike  the  appearance  of  the  parallel  rails  of  the  steam- 
road),  however  far  produced,  can  never  meet,  and  may  com- 
pare with  these  geometrical  ideals  all  actual  triangles  and 
pairs  of  lines,  so  all  men  may  test  the  purity  of  their  actual 
conduct  by  comparing  it  with  the  moral  ideal.  For  practical 
reason  affords  to  all  rational  beings  an  "intuition"  of  the 
unchanging  standard  of  right  conduct.  Such  an  intuitionist 
of  the  pronounced  rational  type  was  the  same  great  thinker, 
Kant,  whom  we  classified  as  a  legalist  in  Ethics,  when  con- 
sidering his  ethical  philosophy  from  another  point  of  view. 

It  is  instructive  to  notice  in  this  connection  how  one-sided 
are  all  these  forms  of  idealistic  theory;  just  as  the  practice 
of  the  Virtuous  Life  is  by  most  men  one-sided.  Considered 
from  the  point  of  view  of  their  disposition,  education,  and 
habits,  some  persons  are  obviously  better  fitted  to  conduct 
themselves  properly  and  to  attain  the  goal  of  virtuous  living, 
if  they  act  very  largely  in  pursuance  of  their  spontaneous 
good  feeling,  their  natural  kindliness,  sense  of  justice,  and 
courage  in  speech  and  deed— -the  sum-total  of  which  con- 
stitutes for  them  the  emotional  ideal  of  a  morally  good  man. 
It  cannot  be  denied,  however,  that  the  "intuitions"  of  such 
persons  are  peculiarly  liable  to  do  mischief  through  lack  of 
that  cool  judgment  and  habit  of  reasoning  logically  from 
premises,  coupled  with  that  self-restraint,  which  makes  the 
will  refuse  to  yield  to  morally  good  impulses  until  the  duty 


IDEALISM   IN   ETHICS  517 

of  foresight  has  been  exercised  in  the  effort  to  determine 
how  the  conduct  is  going  to  result.  Certain  other  persons,  in 
their  turn,  not  at  all  infrequently  fail  to  be  good  according 
to  the  ideal  standard  which  the  more  emotional  intuitionists 
would  set  up ;  the  intuitions  of  cool  judgment  too  often  end 
by  suppressing  all  goodly  emotions  in  the  interests  of  pruden- 
tial considerations.  In  fact,  the  course  such  "cool  judges" 
habitually  follow  results  in  immense  loss  of  the  opportunity 
to  do  good,  even  through  the  fear  of  doing  harm,  —  not  to 
take  too  much  account  of  the  undoubted  fact  that  what  society 
especially  needs  for  its  betterment  is  often  more  spontaneity 
in  the  brave  expression,  by  deed  and  speech,  of  sympathetic 
kindly  feeling  and  of  that  highly  emotional  sense  of  justice 
which  characterizes  so  many  somewhat  fanatical  minds. 

In  regarding  all  this  human  experience  from  the  point  of 
view  offered  by  a  properly  constructed  idealistic  theory,  the 
explanation  comes  promptly  and  abundantly  from  consid- 
erations already  supported  by  abundant  facts:  Every  good 
person  actually  has,  and  from  the  nature  of  morality  as 
belonging  to  personality  must  have,  an  ideal  of  his  own 
peculiar  Self.  Men  generally  do  not  like  peculiar  selves,  — 
at  least,  not  those  which  are  too  peculiar.  But  the  peculi- 
arity of  the  Moral  Self  which  I  am  commending,  and  in 
which  I  insist  the  moral  ideal  for  every  individual  human 
being  must  reside,  is  not  the  peculiarity  of  the  "crank." 
Even  less  is  it  characterized  by  that  pernicious  determina- 
tion which  tries  to  reduce  all  the  rich  individuality  of  the 
Virtuous  Life  amongst  the  multitudes  of  the  human  race  to 
the  utmost  possible  uniformity  in  the  details  of  opinion  and  of 
practice.  On  the  contrary,  its  maxim,  while  it  recognizes  all 
the  worth  of  social  influences  and  the  close  connection  of 
custom  and  law  with  essential  morality,  is  a  very  generous 
"Live  and  let  live,"  so  far  as  virtuous  living  is  concerned. 
Each  individual,  in  order  to  be  moral,  must  commit  himself, 
such  as  he  is  by  inherited  disposition  and  under  the  circum- 


518  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

stances  which  make  his  physical  and  social  environment,  — 
must  commit  his  very  own  Self  to  the  ideal  which  this  same 
self  progressively  constructs,  of  what  he  ought  to  be. 

Individuality  is,  therefore,  of  the  very  essence  of  morality. 
In  the  social  organization  which  is  composed  of  a  multitude 
of  individuals  there  is  always  abundant  demand  and  ample 
room  for  a  great  variety  of  moral  selves;  just  as  we  have 
reason  to  believe  (a  faith  about  the  justification  of  which 
more  will  be  said  in  another  place)  that  the  Absolute  Self 
designs  and  has  regard  for  all  the  particular  manifestations 
of  moral  selfhood,  in  whose  common  practice  of  the  virtuous 
life  and  development  of  character,  —  each  in  his  own  some- 
what peculiar  way,  —  the  fulfilment  of  His  plans  takes 
place. 

It  must  be  further  acknowledged,  in  the  third  place,  that 
in  every  form  of  social  organization  many  of  the  laws,  cus- 
toms, moral  maxims,  and  opinions  about  matters  of  conduct, 
are  accepted  so  unquestioningly  by  the  moral  feeling  and 
ethical  judgment  of  the  community  as  to  make  the  impres- 
sion of  an  intuitive  cognition.  In  other  words,  the  actual 
forms  of  conduct  prevalent  in  any  society  have  the  appear- 
ance to  the  members  of  that  society  of  corresponding  with 
the  absolute  ideal  of  morality.  So  far  forth,  then,  the  social 
ideal,  as  it  has  actually  established  itself  by  historical 
process,  is,  for  the  time  being,  the  accepted  ideal  of  the 
multitude  of  individuals.  For  the  multitude  this  ideal  is, 
in  its  main  features,  entirely  satisfactory.  And  in  many 
cases  of  conscience,  even  those  individual  members  of  the 
social  whole  who  are  most  disposed  to  frame  their  own  ideal 
of  conduct,  and  to  act  somewhat  independently  of  the  com- 
mon practices  and  opinions,  yield  to  the  almost  irresistible 
force  of  these  embodied  and  entrenched  "intuitions"  of  what 
is  right  in  conduct  and  in  character.  Indeed,  a  certain  large 
conformity,  which  would  better  be  made  with  the  utmost 
possible  of  good  conscience,  is  essential  to  any  ethico-social 


IDEALISM  IN  ETHICS  519 

organization  among  moral  selves.  Many  matters,  accord- 
ingly, are  treated  by  persons  who  are  inclined  to  dissent,  or 
who  would  prefer  different  laws,  customs,  moral  maxims, 
and  opinions  about  matters  of  conduct,  as  morally  indif- 
ferent. The  good  man  may  conform,  and  still  hold  to  his 
own  ideal.  In  other  matters  a  certain  large  conformity 
takes  place  which  is  not  altogether  with  good  conscience; 
and  in  still  others,  revolt  arises  against  the  demands  of 
society  upon  the  individual  to  suppress  the  feelings  of  obli- 
gation that  bind  him  to  his  own  peculiar  ideal. 

And  now  appear  facts  of  ethical  experience  which  contra- 
dict Intuitionism  in  Ethics.  Soon  the  history  of  the  moral 
evolution  of  any  progressive  community  shows  that  the 
common  ideal  which  has  undertaken  to  enforce  itself  within 
the  moral  consciousness  of  the  individual  members  of  the 
community  is,  after  all,  only  a  "rough  and  ready"  affair. 
At  its  worst  it  cannot  wholly  exclude  from  the  place  of 
respect  and  command  the  more  particular  ideal  of  any 
individual  Moral  Self.  At  its  best,  it  cannot  wholly  be 
accepted  as  a  substitute  for  this  particular  ideal.  Aristotle 
held,  indeed,  that  a  slave  could  not  be  a  person,  and  could 
not  hold  or  follow  any  ideal  of  a  virtuous  life  for  his  own 
Self.  But  we  know,  that  even  under  the  limitations  of 
ancient  slavery,  slaves  could  cherish  their  ideals  of  good- 
ness, and  could  make  a  fairer  show  of  realizing  them  than 
could  many  of  the  Greek  warriors,  statesmen,  and  philoso- 
phers. Moreover,  all  the  while  the  process  of  change  is 
going  on  in  the  social  ideal ;  and  not  infrequently  the  multi- 
tude comes  around  to  the  "good  few,"  if  the  latter  will  not 
conform  overmuch  to  the  multitude.  So  that  every  man 
may  say,  "  If  in  the  last  resort  I  cannot  follow  the  type  of 
conduct,  in  general  or  in  any  concrete  case,  which  corre- 
sponds with  the  prevalent  and  commonly  recognized  moral 
ideal,  and  if  I  choose,  at  whatever  risk  of  social  unpopularity, 
or  loss  of  social  influence,  or  even  suffering  of  penality,  to 


620  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

follow  my  own  more  personal  ideal,  it  may  he  —  God  knows 
whether  it  will  be  —  that  sooner  or  later  the  conception  of 
the  right  which  the  multitude  hold  will  be  exchanged  for  the 
conception  which  I  now  hold;  at  any  rate,  when  my  ideal 
has  been  purified  and  clarified  as  best  I  can,  to  that^  and  to 
no  other,  must  my  Self  cling,  or  I  am  false  to  the  absolute 
and  universal  moral  good. " 

When  now,  in  view  of  these  conflicting  considerations  we 
ask  for  the  secret  of  that  idealistic  theory  which  explains 
"the  Nature  of  the  Right,"  the  psychological  and  historical 
suggestions  are  not  so  difficult  to  discover.  Certainly,  "  The 
Right "  is  by  nature  both  subjective  and  individual,  on  the 
one  hand ;  and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  objective  and 
universal.  It  is  both,  at  one  and  the  same  time,  when  con- 
sidered from  two  different  points  of  view;  —  from  both  of 
which  points  of  view,  however,  it  is  necessary  to  consider 
its  proper  nature.  Every  example  of  morally  right  conduct 
is,  by  its  very  nature,  subjective  and  individual.  It  is 
some  person's  conduct;  and,  as  conduct,  it  is  an  affair  of 
conscious  feeling,  judgment,  and  volition,  considered  in  re- 
lation to  an  ideal.  This  ideal,  too,  is  subjective  and  indi- 
vidual. It  is  the  product  of  that  same  individual's  judging 
and  imagining  activity.  But  "the  Right"  appears  also  as 
objectified  and  universalized.  For  all  men  have,  in  order  to 
constitute  them  moral  and  capable  of  living  together  under 
ethico-social  relations,  a  certain  constitutional  equipment; 
and  certain  common  relations,  like  those  of  the  family,  the 
tribe,  or  the  more  complex  social  organization,  belong  to 
men  everywhere  and  at  all  times.  Therefore,  the  conduct 
of  the  individual  is  never  solely  his  own  affair;  it  has 
constantly  to  measure  itself  by  this  more  objective  and 
generally  accepted  standard;  and  its  ideal  can  never  be 
achieved,  nor  even  approached,  by  those 

"  Who,  trimmed  in  forms  and  visages  of  duty, 
Keep  yet  their  hearts  attending  on  themselves." 


IDEALISM  IN  ETHICS  521 

Moreover,  these  two  ideals  —  both  the  individual  and  sub- 
jective, and  the  objective  and  universal  —  are  never  framed 
in  any  approach  to  a  complete  independence  of  each  other; 
nor  can  they  be  kept  apart  in  their  application  to  the  theo- 
retical solution  of  the  problems  of  conduct,  or  in  their  effect 
upon  the  feelings  and  deeds  which  correspond  to  the  ideals. 
Not  infrequently  the  two  seem  struggling  together;  the  one 
to  enforce  laws  and  rules,  and  to  realize  in  the  social  organ- 
ization the  conception  of  an  eternal  and  absolute  character 
for  that  which  is  esteemed  right;  the  other  to  introduce 
exceptions  and  to  break  down  existing  laws  and  rules  by 
an  appeal  to  some  superior  interest  or  higher  authority. 
Especially  is  this  apt  to  be  true  in  all  rapidly  transitional 
stages  of  the  development  of  ethical  opinions  and  practices, 
whether  with  the  individual  or  with  society  at  large.  Such 
a  period  was  passed  through  in  old  Greek  life  when  the 
Sophists  were  prominent;  such  a  period  is  now  being 
passed  through  in  Japan,  and  indeed  all  over  the  world. 
Repeatedly  between  the  ancient  history  and  the  present 
time  has  "the  cake  of  custom,"  and  all  that  goes  with  it, 
been  breaking  into  fragments  and  forming  anew,  so  as 
greatly  and  speedily  to  modify  the  particular  ideals  of 
many  individuals,  and  thus  to  modify  the  common  ideal. 
Always,  indeed,  some  kind  of  conduct  is  considered  morally 
to  be  preferred;  always  virtue  is  praiseworthy  and  vice  is 
blameworthy ;  always  there  is  some  mental  picture  of  what 
a  man  ought  to  be  and  of  what  society  ought  to  be,  that 
awakens  feelings  of  obligation  and  of  moral  appreciation, 
because  it  corresponds  to  the  rising,  if  not  to  the  setting 
sun  of  the  Ideal  Moral  Good. 

It  cannot  be  said,  however,  that  the  doubts  and  oppositions 
over  the  problems  of  conduct  which  characterize  all  human 
experience,  and  which  especially  characterize  those  epochs 
of  transition  to  which  reference  has  just  been  made,  affect 
the  fundamental   "Nature  of  the  Right."    Nor  can  it  be 


522  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

asserted  that  the  antagonism,  or  even  the  twofoldness, 
which  seems  especially  to  develop  at  these  periods,  exists 
between  the  individual's  ideal  of  his  own  Self  and  the  social 
Ideal.  For,  in  truth,  the  ultimate  moral  ideal  is  always 
necessarily  social;  it  is  invariably  conceived  of  by  every 
idealistic  theory,  which  has  any  claim  to  critical  considera- 
tion, as  including  the  moral  good  of  the  one  and  the  many, 
of  the  individual  and  of  the  social  organization.  What 
precisely  this  ideal  good  may  be,  and  how  it  is  going  to 
harmonize  in  particular  cases,  or  in  the  final  result,  the 
interests  both  of  the  individual  and  of  society,  no  one  may  be 
able  to  describe  a  priori.  Certainly,  no  theory  which  confounds 
all  morality  with  the  prudential  virtues  can  frame  a  solution 
for  the  problem  which  the  conflicting  interests  of  society  and 
of  the  individual  presents.  But  so  far  as  one  attends  strictly 
to  the  moral  ideal,  the  difficulties  and  antagonisms  between 
the  individual  and  society  are  of  another  order. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  my  personal  selfhood,  and  its 
moral  ideal,  I  am  bound  to  be  faithful  to  it ;  but  this  fidelity 
cannot  be,  if  I  am  careless  of  the  social  good,  and  do  not 
take  my  part  in  realizing  the  ideal  of  a  community  composed 
of  upright  moral  selves.  On  the  other  hand,  he  who  urges 
upon  me  to  conform  to  the  generally  accejjted  ideal,  if  his 
urgency  be  upon  moral  grounds,  cannot  disregard  the  fact 
that  my  moral  welfare  is  involved  in  my  fidelity  to  my  own 
ideal.  As  a  moral  adviser,  therefore,  he  may  try  to  make 
me  see  that  by  conformity  to  the  more  general  judgment  of 
the  social  organization  as  embodied  in  its  customs,  laws, 
maxims,  and  opinions  on  matters  of  conduct,  I  shall  be 
doing  my  duty,  fulfilling  my  obligation  to  the  moral  ideal 
which  is  reasonably  mine  under  the  existing  circumstances. 
But  he  cannot  exhort  me  to  go  contrary  to  my  ideal  of  what 
I  ought  to  do,  without  abandoning  the  ethical  point  of  view. 
The  dcemon  of  Socrates  can  be  enlightened  or  persuaded, 
but  it  cannot  be  forced.     My   friend  who  differs  from  me, 


IDEALISM  IN  ETHICS  523 

although  quite  radically  as  to  how  a  man  ought  to  act  under 
a  given  concrete  set  of  circumstances  —  and  here  in  the  word 
"action"  we  are  to  include  motives,  intentions,  and  feel- 
ings, as  well  as  external  behavior  —  may  still  remain  my 
true  friend,  standing  with  me  on  the  higher  grounds  of 
genuine  morality,  if  each  of  us  is  faithful  to  his  own  moral 
ideal  in  each  particular  case.  Indeed,  my  friend's  moral 
ideal,  as  an  individual  and  subjective  affair,  may  differ  from 
mine  in  not  a  few  important  ways,  and  yet,  in  the  larger  and 
more  comprehensive  meaning  of  the  words,  we  may  both  be 
seeking  the  same  Ideal. 

This  more  inclusive  ideal  is  undoubtedly  social ;  and  so  it 
is  adapted  to  include  the  particular  ideals  of  the  individuals 
composing  society.  But  the  social  ideal  itself  is  decidedly 
not  the  ideal  of  a  social  organization  in  which  the  customs, 
maxims,  laws,  and  opinions,  that  are  for  the  time  being  most 
popular  and  dominant,  assert  and  enforce  the  right  to  control 
absolutely  the  individual  in  the  pursuit  of  his  own  moral 
ideal.  Such  a  social  organization  would  not  correspond  to 
the  Ideal  of  a  society  of  moral  selves.  Indeed,  the  ecclesi- 
astical and  civil  organizations  which  have  —  no  matter  with 
what  pretence  of  a  good  conscience,  or  with  what  show  of 
reasonable  grounds  —  endeavored  so  to  dictate  moral  ideas 
and  laws  to  their  individual  members  have  usually  turned 
out  most  mischievous  and  abominable  tyrannies.  The  pres- 
ent day  proposals,  which  are  more  subtle  and  indirect, 
whether  of  the  more  pronouncedly  imperialistic  or  social- 
istic order,  to  force  conformity  to  some  common  ideal,  when 
the  Moral  Self  is  not  intelligently  committed  to  it  as  its  very 
own  ideal,  will  undoubtedly  turn  out  just  as  disastrously. 
The  two  prominent  existing  and  contending  types  of  social 
organization  —  Imperialism  and  Socialism  —  are  both  char- 
acteristically immoral  and  fatally  destructive  of  genuine 
morality.  For,  the  moment  you  conceive  of  your  social  or- 
ganization as  successfully  framed  after  the  pattern  that  com- 


524  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

mends  itself  to  the  ethical  judgment,  and  that  stirs  moral 
feeling  and  the  imagination  in  appreciation  of  its  excellence, 
you  have  rejected  for  the  individual  the  supreme  authority  of 
the  prevalent  customs,  maxims,  laws,  and  opinions. 

An  ethically  ideal  society  is  essentially  such  that  it  can 
be  constituted  only  of  ideally  good  persons  living  together  in 
social  relations.  But  the  good  person  is  the  Moral  Self  who 
shapes  his  conduct  in  conformity  to  his  own  Ideal  of  what  a 
Self  ought  to  be.  He  is  deferential  to  society;  he  conforms 
oftentimes  to  its  customs  and  laws,  and  often  remains  silent 
in  the  presence  of  its  maxims  and  opinions,  although  they 
do  not  represent  satisfactorily  the  ideal  which  he  has  made 
his  own.  He  is  devoted  to  the  best  interests  of  society,  as 
he  conceives  of  these  interests;  for  them  he  may  wish  to 
live  and,  on  occasion,  be  quite  willing  to  die.  But  he  can 
conscientiously  do  this,  and  so  maintain  in  integrity  his 
own  moral  selfhood,  only  in  so  far  as  his  own  moral  reason 
will  permit;  and  when  the  necessity  arises,  he  appeals  to 
something  within  himself,  or  above  himself  and  above  all 
men,  for  the  warrant  to  disregard  and  even  to  transgress 
the  standard  of  morality  which  has  become  objective  and 
generally  accepted.  He  may  call  this  something  his  dcemon, 
as  did  Socrates ;  or  he  may  style  it  the  Moral  Law  and  spell 
it  with  a  capital,  as  do  those  devotedly  good  men  who  wish 
to  free  morality  from  all  taint  of  religion ;  or  he  may  call  it 
the  voice  or  the  law  of  God,  as  the  religious  consciousness 
has  always  done,  and  will  always  continue  to  do  —  the  con- 
clusions of  ethical  societies  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding. 
Or  the  individual  man  may  even  have  no  other  name  for  it 
than  just  simply  this:  —  What  Jfeel,  or  think,  that  /ought 
to  do.  But  however  he  may  denominate  this  marvellous 
something,  and  whether  he  locate  it  within  or  without,  in 
the  soul  alone  or  also  in  heaven  and  in  the  World-soul,  if  he 
remain  a  truly  moral  man,  he  will  die  rather  than  be  false 
to  this  ideal. 


IDEALISM  IN  ETHICS  625 

Let  it  not  be  overlooked  that  I  have  said  "A^  will  die 
rather  than  be  false  to  his  ideal. "  I  have  not  said  that  he 
will  consign  others  to  death ;  or  indirectly  work  to  do  them 
any  inferior  harm,  because  they  differ  from  him  as  to  the 
nature  and  application  of  the  moral  ideal.  Nor  will  he 
necessarily  hate,  and  fight,  the  multitude  who  demand  from 
him  either  conformity,  with  the  sacrifice  of  his  ideal,  or  else 
the  loss  of  other  forms  of  good.  In  this  respect  the  true 
moral  spirit  is  at  one  with  the  method  of  Jesus  and  with  the 
genuine  spirit  of  Christianity.  In  this  respect,  most  of  the 
world's  present  plans  for  forcing  upon  unwilling  subjects 
foreign  ideals  of  the  ethical  order  —  whether  of  the  more 
obviously  civic  and  social  or  the  more  private  and  domestic 
kind  —  are  both  immoral  and  un-Christian. 

The  further  developments  of  Idealism  in  Ethics  and  its 
adjustments  to  the  facts  and  laws  which  an  empirical  inves- 
tigation of  the  data  discloses,  are  significantly  aided  by  the 
conception  of  evolution  as  applied  to  the  sphere  of  human 
conduct.  Our  use  of  this  conception  has  already  shown  how 
both  the  ideal  of  the  individual  in  its  more  purely  subjective 
form,  and  also  the  more  objective  and  general  form  of  the 
social  ideal,  are  constantly  in  a  process  of  change.  For 
the  individual  in  the  lower  stages  of  human  life,  and  in  the 
earlier  stages  of  the  highest  development  of  this  life,  the 
moral  ideal  is  fragmentary,  fitful,  and  largely  dependent  for 
its  more  special  characteristics  as  well  as  for  the  strength  of 
its  influence  over  the  conduct,  upon  the  physical  and  social 
environment.  This  is  only  to  say  that  any  child  of  man, 
and  all  childlike  men,  think  and  imagine  with  respect  to 
what  they  ought  to  do  and  to  be,  in  a  relatively  strict 
dependence  upon  their  parental  inheritance  and  total  en- 
vironment of  things  and  of  other  persons. 

What  has  been  shown  as  to  how  the  individual's  ideal 
of  morality  develops,  and  how  this  ideal  stands  related  to 
his  actual  conduct,  need  not  be  repeated  here  even  in  the 


526  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

most  summary  manner.  It  need  only  be  said  that  the  ideal- 
izing activity  itself  depends  in  a  most  important  way  upon 
its  own  effect  on  the  actual  moral  life  of  the  individual. 
The  man  who  —  to  use  the  popular  expression  —  "  is  as  good 
as  he  knows  how  to  be,"  knows  the  better  for  this  very 
reason  how  to  be  good.  In  other  words,  the  ideal  of  a 
Moral  Self  is  itself  really  developed  by  the  practice  of  the 
Virtuous  Life.  But  this  ideal,  if  practically  disregarded 
and  thwarted,  fails  of  development.  He  who  follows  with 
patience  the  path  of  virtue  learns  how  more  successfully  and 
firmly  to  walk  in  that  path.  But  he  who,  whether  through 
carelessness  or  yielding  to  temptation,  habitually  departs 
from  that  path,  loses  both  the  instinctive  appreciation  of  its 
worth  and  the  ability  to  mark  it  out  for  his  own  feet  with  a 
sure  and  intelligent  judgment.  The  very  nature  of  virtuous 
living,  and  as  well  the  nature  of  morality,  is  such  that  it 
cannot  be  defined  in  detail  for  any  individual.  This  path 
—  the  path  of  virtue,  the  right  course  in  life  —  must  be 
always  in  a  process  of  defining  itself.  The  virtuous  man  is 
a  perpetual  "  path-finder. " 

The  same  changeable  character  and  susceptibility  of  con- 
stant growth  belongs  to  the  moral  and  social  ideal  of  every 
community  of  men  and,  indeed,  of  the  entire  race  regarded 
as  in  a  process  of  development.  Change  characterizes  this 
Ideal,  — whether  it  exist  as  a  sort  of  vague  general  present- 
ment, a  certain  prevalent  type  of  thinking  and  feeling  as  to 
what  the  social  organization  of  human  beings  ought  to  be 
and  what  of  good  it  ought  to  realize  for  its  members,  or 
take  the  more  objective  and  fixed  form  of  popularly  accepted 
customs,  laws,  maxims,  and  institutions. 

Idealism  in  ethics,  then,  if  it  wishes  to  adjust  itself  to 
all  the  data  of  ethics,  as  these  data  are  gathered  from  the 
widest  and  most  varied  sources  by  the  psychological  and 
historical  method,  and  are  subjected  to  philosophical  reflec- 
tion,  must  make  large  use  of  the  theory  of  evolution  in 


IDEALISM  IN  ETHICS  627 

morals.  This  it  can  properly  claim  to  be  able  successfully 
to  do  in  the  following  way.  The  ethical  theory  which  best 
satisfies  all  the  facts  does  indeed  locate  the  Nature  of  the 
Right  in  the  relation  which  conduct  sustains  to  an  Ideal. 
For  every  individual  this  ideal  is  the  ideal  of  his  own  Self 
as  living  and  acting  in  social  relations  with  other  selves; 
and  for  society  the  more  objective  and  seemingly  universal 
ideal  is  that  of  a  multitude  of  such  selves  —  a  social  organ- 
ization of  human  beings  that  are  living  together  and  acting, 
each  one,  in  accordance  with  his  own  moral  ideal.  The 
reciprocal  influence  of  the  individual  and  society  upon  the 
growth  of  moral  ideals  is  secured  by  the  very  nature  of  moral 
selves  socially  organized.  I  have  said  that  every  individual 
forms  his  own  ideal  of  the  Self  which  he  ought  to  be ;  that, 
for  the  most  part,  this  is  done  in  a  very  fitful,  fragmentary, 
and  unsuccessful  way;  and  that  it  is  always  done  under 
the  predominating  influence  of  the  prevalent  social  ideals. 
Each  individual,  however,  contributes  something  to  the  for- 
mation of  the  prevalent  and  typical  social  ideal.  This  is 
true,  although  only  to  less  appreciable  extent,  of  the  lowest 
savages  in  respect  of  the  origin  and  change  of  their  tribal 
customs  and  ideas;  it  is  true  also  of  the  countless  hordes 
of  a  decadent  civilization,  the  multitudes  like  those  at  the 
present  time  of  India  and  of  China.  As  the  entire  race  of 
men  comes  to  experience,  in  more  prompt  and  sensitive  and 
impressive  ways,  its  own  solidarity,  the  reciprocal  influences 
of  the  different  subdivisions  of  the  race  become  more  appre- 
ciable and  significant.  Let  him  who  thinks  that  savages  are 
incapable  of  producing  individuals  which  powerfully  influence 
the  prevalent  ethical  type  of  conduct  and  of  character,  study, 
for  example,  the  history  of  men  like  Tschaka  and  Moshesh 
among  the  Zulus.  On  the  other  hand,  to  suppose  that  the 
Anglo-Saxons,  or  any  other  most  considerable  portion  of 
mankind,  can  remodel  the  morality,  private  and  social,  of 
the  so-called  inferior  races  without  being  themselves  remod- 


528  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

elled  by  these  races  in  a  significant  way,  is  to  fail  of  an 
understanding  of  some  of  the  plainest  lessons  of  history. 

Man,  then,  I  conclude,  in  his  psychological  and  historical 
development,  creates  his  own  ideals  of  conduct  and  charac- 
ter, —  each  individual  moulding  for  himself  in  particular  the 
idea,  and  yet  all  for  each  one  and  each  one  for  all.  The 
Right  is  defined  for  every  individual  and  for  every  age  hy  the 
fidelity  with  which  the  individual  and  the  age  actualizes  in 
conduct  this  its  perpetually  growing  Ideal. 

We  are  now  prepared  to  summarize  the  more  definite 
answer  given  by  Idealism  in  Ethics  to  the  three  questions 
which  it  was  declared  at  the  beginning  of  this  chapter  every 
idealistic  theory  must  be  able  to  answer.  The  three  ques- 
tions. Whose  ?  When  ?  and  What  kind  ?  must,  as  we  have 
seen,  be  answered  in  the  following  way. 

1.  For  every  individual  his  own  ideal  of  moral  selfhood 
furnishes  the  criteria,  the  sanctions,  and  the  end  of  morality 
in  such  manner  that  if  he  conforms  his  conduct  to  this  ideal 
he  is  entitled,  at  the  bar  of  universal  moral  reason,  to  be 
called  a  good  man.  By  such  conformity  the  individual 
realizes  in  his  own  personal  experience  the  nature  of  that 
which  is  eternally  and  unchangeably  right.  For  it  is  the 
spirit  of  devotion  to  the  ideal  of  personal  being  in  social 
relations  which  constitutes  the  very  essence  of  ethical  Tight- 
ness. Only  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  this  spirit  itself 
involves  and  absorbs  the  entire  Self,  — involves  all  the  func- 
tions and  activities  of  moral  personality  in  its  service  daily 
and  momently,  and  absorbs  them  all  in  the  rational  pursuit 
of  its  more  and  more  perfect  realization. 

Whatever  objections  may  be  urged  against  the  subjective 
and  vague  character  of  this  conclusion  will  be  found,  I  think, 
to  have  been  answered,  either  directly  or  indirectly,  while 
considering  in  detail  the  nature  of  the  Moral  Self  and  of  the 
Virtuous  Life.  The  following,  however,  may  seem  to  demand 
a  few  words  additional.     How  is  it,  then,  to  be  explained 


IDEALISM  IN  ETHICS  629 

that  so  much  of  error  in  ethical  judgment  and  of  practical 
failure  to  keep  the  recognized  moral  code  may  be  charged 
against  those  who  seem  the  most  pronounced  in  their  claims 
to  pursue  faithfully  their  own  ideal  of  the  right  ?  To  this 
question  the  reply  is  obvious:  Claims  and  appearances  are 
by  no  means  sure  tests  of  the  entire,  sincere  attitude  of  the 
person  toward  his  ideal  of  personality;  and  the  theory  of 
the  virtuous  life  shows  how  essential  is  good  judgment  and 
intelligent  regard  for  the  welfare  of  society,  both  to  the  con- 
struction and  progressive  improvement  of  every  individuaPs 
moral  ideal,  and  also  to  his  progressive  realization  of  that 
ideal.  In  further  reply,  it  might  be  asked:  How  can  any 
one  judge  what  is  right  except  with  his  own  judgment;  or 
form  a  conception  of  what  he  himself,  or  others,  ought  to 
do  or  to  be,  except  by  activity  of  his  own  thinking  and 
imagining;  or  feel  regard  for  the  welfare  of  others,  other- 
wise than  as  a  movement  of  his  own  affections  ?  For  me, 
there  is  no  morality  but  my  own,  which  can  assert  or  decide 
the  claim  to  be  classified  with  that  which  is  universally 
and  eternally  right.  Moreover,  the  objections  which  arise 
from  the  shifting  nature  of  the  moral  ideal  itself  are  to  be 
answered  by  recurring  again  to  the  conception  of  moral 
development.  It  is  the  direction  and  the  goal  of  life  which 
chiefly  determines  its  character  at  any  particular  stage  in 
its  evolution.  This  is  true  of  every  form  and  aspect  of  life ; 
but  it  is  pre-eminently  true  of  the  moral  life. 

In  a  more  figurative  way  perhaps,  but  still  in  accordance 
with  empirical  data,  we  may  say  that  the  same  declaration 
is  true  of  any  particular  society  or  stage  in  the  moral  evolu- 
tion of  the  race :  its  own  ideal  furnishes  for  it  the  criteria, 
sanctions,  and  goal  of  morality,  so  that  a  practical  corre- 
spondence with  this  ideal  tests  the  rightness  or  wrongness 
of  the  prevalent  customs,  laws,  and  maxims.  Here,  again, 
however,  the  conception  of  development  and  the  acknowl- 
edgment of  the  important  and  dominating  part  which  the 

34 


530  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

most  enlightened  and  pure  members  of  the  race  play  in  its 
moral  evolution  is  necessary  to  save  the  idealistic  theory 
from  hopeless  confusion.  Of  such  moral  leaders,  moral 
seers  and  prophets  of  the  Absolute,  known  or  imagined  as 
perfect  Moral  Personality,  we  may  say  in  the  words  of 
Matthew  Arnold:  — 

*'  Beacons  of  hope  ye  appear  I 

Ye  fill  up  the  gaps  in  our  files, 
Strengthen  the  wavering  hands, 
'Stablish,  continue  our  march." 

It  is  by  those  who,  standing  in  the  front  ranks  on  account  of 
the  position  which  they  have  attained  for  their  own  ethical 
ideals,  reveal  the  advanced  stages  of  human  moral  develop- 
ment, that  the  more  nearly  absolute  criteria,  sanctions,  and 
goal  of  morality  are  set  for  the  race.  These  "good  few" 
are,  indeed,  children  of  their  own  age,  and  are  never  able 
wholly  to  free  themselves  even  in  the  formation  of  their 
most  exalted  mental  pictures  of  what  human  society  ought 
to  be,  from  the  influences  which  are  ancestral  and  environ- 
mental. Nor  is  it  best,  whether  we  consider  the  moral  value 
of  their  own  conduct  or  the  magnitude  of  their  influence 
upon  others,  that  they  should  reach  such  an  extremity  of 
idealism  as  to  discourage  and  confuse,  rather  than  encourage 
and  confirm,  their  fellow  men.  In  them,  however,  the 
highest  ideals  of  what  a  Moral  Self  in  social  relations  with 
other  selves  should  do  and  ought  to  be  have  come  to  con- 
sciousness, as  it  were.  It  is  pre-eminently  their  ideals  which 
answer  for  every  age  the  first  of  our  three  questions. 

2.  The  answer  to  the  second  of  the  three  questions,  pro- 
posed to  Idealism  in  Ethics  by  an  empirical  investigation  of 
the  phenomena  of  man's  moral  life  and  moral  development 
necessarily  admits  only  of  a  somewhat  vague  and  indefinite 
answer.  When  is  this  ideal  brought  into  the  only  existence 
which  an  ideal  can  have,  in  order  that  it  may  serve  as  the 


IDEALISM  IN  ETHICS  531 

criterion,  sanction,  and  end  of  morality  ?  In  multitudes  of 
cases  we  may  give  the  answer  which  the  ordinary  intuitional 
theory  of  ethics  gives.  The  ideal  is  constructed  at  the  time 
that  the  problem  of  conduct  arises  in  consciousness  and  by 
the  same  active  consciousness  in  which  the  problem  arises* 
Thus  the  problem  itself  is  solved  by  the  very  appearance 
of  the  ideal;  the  man  envisages  or  intuits  his  duty  in  an 
intelligent  and  whole-hearted  way.  This  duty  is  his,  what- 
ever might  have  been  the  duty  of  others  under  similar  circum- 
stances. The  criteria,  the  sanctions,  the  more  immediate 
end  to  be  secured,  are  all  there  present,  so  to  say,  in  the 
one  transaction ;  and  for  this  particular  piece  of  conduct  no 
further  justification  of  its  rightness  is  necessary  than  that 
which  the  present  experience  of  the  individual  secures. 
This  is  spontaneous  morality ;  but  it  is  no  less  ideally  moral 
conduct  because  it  is  so  spontaneous.  In  other  cases,  how- 
ever, the  actual  must  be  brought,  as  it  were,  into  comparison 
with  the  ideal  by  way  rather  of  reflection  and  thoughtful 
judgment  based  upon  the  opinions  of  others,  or  upon  the 
social  requirements,  or  upon  the  calculated  consequences  of 
the  conduct.  In  such  cases  the  nature  of  the  right  may  be 
either  revealed  in  consciousness,  at  the  end  of  the  period  of 
reflection,  in  a  surprisingly  sudden  and  clear  manner,  or  it 
may  come  only  slowly  and  doubtfully  after  all.  Or,  again, 
some  logical  connection  of  the  particular  problem  of  conduct 
with  a  law  or  principle  which  embodies  for  the  intellect  a 
relatively  permanent  phase  of  the  moral  Ideal  may  be  indis- 
pensable in  order  to  realize  the  right. 

Especially  must  the  principle  of  evolution  be  taken  into 
the  account  in  every  attempt  to  answer  this  question  both  for 
the  individual,  and  for  the  race.  When  do  we  arrive  at  the 
absolute  and  infallible  criterion  of  all  conduct  ?  When  is 
the  soul's  search  for  the  morally  good  rewarded  by  discover- 
ing those  sanctions  of  morality  to  which  an  appeal  may 
always  be  made  as  to  something  universal  and  unchanging  ? 


532  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

When  do  we  get  in  all  its  grandeur  and  beauty  the  picture  of 
the  final  end  which  all  development  of  moral  character,  at 
whatever  cost  of  suffering  and  struggle  by  the  way,  aims  to 
secure ;  and  which  the  final  moral  judgment  will  pronounce 
worth  all  the  suffering  and  struggle  which  its  pursuit  may 
have  cost  ?  Now,  always,  or  never,  —  according  to  the  point 
of  view  which  the  inquirer  takes.  The  criterion,  the  sanc- 
tion, the  goal,  is  now  and  always  with  us.  The  criterion 
is  our  own  best  present  moral  consciousness;  the  sanction 
is  in  the  authority  of  that  same  consciousness;  the  goal  is 
realized  every  time  we  actually  make  a  piece  of  conduct 
conform  to  our  ideal  of  just  what  that  conduct,  here  and  now 
and  under  these  definite  circumstances,  ought  to  be.  And 
this  statement  is  not  vitiated  in  the  least  by  the  fact  that, 
not  infrequently,  we  are  in  doubt  and  cannot  see  clearly 
what  we  ought  to  do.  For  to  doubt,  and  to  act  in  doubt,  or 
to  refrain  from  acting  because  of  doubt, —  all  this  is  what  for 
man  the  highest  criterion,  the  most  imperative  sanction,  and 
the  most  desirable  goal,  of  his  present  existence  require  him 
to  do. 

And,  making  the  necessary  changes  in  one's  language, 
without  neglecting  the  increasingly  figurative  character  of 
those  conceptions  which  necessitate  the  change  in  language, 
one  may  maintain  that  what  is  true  of  the  individual  is  true 
of  society  at  large.  Nations  as  well  as  individuals,  when 
they  wish  to  do  the  right,  sometimes  see  it  clearly  in  an 
intuitive  way,  and  doit  spontaneously;  sometimes  they  act 
rightly  only  after  reflection;  and  then  either  with  a  clear 
moral  judgment  or  in  moral  perplexity  and  doubt.  Oftener, 
of  course,  they  do  wrong  because  they  refuse  to  be  moral 
at  all. 

3.  In  answering  the  third  question  which  empiricism 
proposes  to  Idealism  in  Ethics,  the  entire  course  of  our 
examination  comes  to  a  concurrent  and  accordant  termina- 
tion.    The  ideal  of  morality  is  a  Personal  Ideal.     As  such 


IDEALISM  IN  ETHICS  583 

it  involves  all  the  characteristics  of  personal  being  and  per- 
sonal life.  These  are  the  characteristics  of  a  moral  Self, 
living  and  acting  in  social  relations  with  other  selves.  In 
every  individual  case  this  ideal  is  dependent  for  its  con- 
struction upon  the  combined  activity  of  feeling,  thought, 
imagination,  and  will  —  the  activity,  namely,  of  the  ideal- 
izing human  mind.  In  every  individual  case  this  ideal  is 
dependent  for  its  partial  and  progressive  realization  upon  the 
same  activities  of  the  same  being  that  constructs  the  ideal. 
It  is  only  as  this  Self  functions  according  to  its  own  nature 
in  its  different  social  relations  that  the  criteria  of  right  con- 
duct come  into  existence.  These  criteria  themselves  are  the 
reactions  of  the  moral  personality  upon  the  mental  represen- 
tations of  its  own  behavior,  or  of  the  behavior  of  some  other 
person,  toward  other  persons  in  the  same  society.  The  sanc- 
tions of  morality,  too,  have  no  existence  other  than  in  per- 
sonal existence;  they,  too,  are  the  rational  and  emotional 
responses  of  the  same  human  nature.  Man  judges  his  own 
morality,  and  feels  the  inestimable  worth  of  it,  when  he 
comes  to  moral  ^e^f-consciousness.  And  the  goal  which  he 
sets  before  himself  for  attainment  by  the  activity  of  the 
moral  self  is  the  realization  of  the  ideal  of  that  same  Self, 
—  the  actual,  perfected  personal  Life  in  social  relations  with 
others.  The  idealistic  answer,  then,  to  the  question.  What 
kind  of  an  Ideal  is  this  which  you  propose  as  affording  the 
criteria,  sanctions,  and  end  of  right  conduct?  is  this:  It  is  a 
personal  ideal,  the  conception  of  the  life  of  moral  and  social 
Selfhood,  in  its  whole  range  of  constitutional  activities  pro- 
gressively attaining  the  perfection  of  its  being.  In  a  word, 
it  is  — 

"...  all  our  rarer,  better,  truer  self, 
That  sobbed  religiously  in  yearning  song, 
That  watched  to  ease  the  burden  of  the  world, 
Laboriously  tracing  what  must  be, 
And  what  may  yet  be  better." 


634  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

Two  remarks  may  fitly  bring  to  its  close  this  part  of  the 
discussion.  First:  In  determining  the  Nature  of  the  Right 
two  conceptions  are  of  paramount  and  even  of  unique  im- 
portance. These  are  the  conception  of  Personality  and  the 
conception  of  Development.  In  other  connections^  I  have 
shown  how  the  conception  of  a  Self  is  needed  to  be  under- 
stood —  its  genesis,  nature,  and  unfolding  —  in  order  to 
describe  the  actual  meaning  of  all  other  descriptions,  and  to 
explain  all  other  explanations.  For  the  world  is,  in  all  its 
lower  individual  forms  of  being  and  so-called  purely  physi- 
cal relations,  a  self-like  World ;  it  is  understood  by  science, 
and  can  be  understood  by  regarding  it,  from  whatever  point 
of  view,  only  as  the  manifestation  of  the  Absolute  Self  in 
a  system  of  self-differentiating  and  self-relating  objects. 
And  now  a  psychological  and  historical  study  of  man's 
moral  nature  and  moral  development  has  shown  that  the 
philosophy  of  conduct  builds  itself  securely  upon  foundations 
of  experience  only  as  it  extends  and  further  emphasizes  this 
same  conception  of  Selfhood.  To  things  and  to  the  lower 
animals,  even  in  our  very  most  immediate  cognition  of  them 
and  of  their  relations  to  us  and  to  one  another,  we  attribute 
self-like  characteristics.  We  do  not,  however,  feel  war- 
ranted in  recognizing  them  as  moral  selves.  But  men  are 
moral  selves,  and  thus  are  capable  of  the  truly  moral  and 
social  life  and  development.  In  a  word,  they  are  persons. 
And  all  the  understanding  of  ethical  phenomena  in  their 
"first  intention,"  as  it  were,  as  well  as  all  further  results 
due  to  reflection  upon  the  implications  and  the  significance 
of  these  phenomena,  require  ethics  to  emphasize  and  com- 
prehend the  conception  of  Personality.  The  kingdom  of 
moral  realities  and  of  moral  values  is  a  kingdom  of  personal 
beings  socially  related  and  socially  organized. 

Equally  necessary  is  it  to  any  semblance  of  a  satisfactory 
ethical  theory  that  emphasis  should  be  laid  upon  the  concep- 

1  In  the  Philosophy  of  Knowledge  and  in  A  Theory  of  Reality,  passim. 


IDEALISM  IN  ETHICS  636 

tion  of  Development.  The  full  definition  of  the  individual 
person  or  of  the  social  organization  is  not  attainable  by  the 
mind  that  studies  only  the  germinal  stages  of  personality  or 
of  society;  or  that  confines  its  attention  to  any  one,  or  to 
any  group  of  the  past  stages  of  evolution.  Clearer  and 
clearer  has  it  become  at  every  step  of  our  investigation  that, 
for  each  individual  person,  the  sources,  the  criteria,  the 
sanctions,  and  the  goal  of  his  own  personal  life  must  be 
accounted  for  by  what  lies  outside  of  that  life;  the  individual 
cannot  be  regarded  as  separate  from  the  great  whole.  And 
what  is  true  of  each  individual  person  is  true  of  every  por- 
tion, and  generation,  and  stage,  of  the  ongoing  moral  life 
of  humanity.  To  understand  and  appreciate  that  life  the 
better,  then,  we  must  strive  to  grasp  together  the  parts 
under  the  conception  of  the  totality.  And  this  the  ideas 
and  laws  of  the  general  theory  of  development,  in  a  measure, 
enable  us  to  do;  but  only  "m  a  measure,"  for  another  remark 
is  needed  to  prepare  our  conclusions  for  the  further  consid- 
erations which  they  seem  to  require. 

This  most  defensible  and  comprehensive  idealistic  theory 
of  man's  ethical  life  and  development  is  far  enough  from 
being  complete  in  itself.  It  shows,  indeed,  how  the  criteria, 
the  sanctions,  the  laws,  and  the  goal  of  conduct  are  all 
included  in  the  ongoing  life  of  that  personality,  when  multi- 
plied in  numbers  and  socially  related,  which  man  is.  But  it 
leaves  us  with  the  picture  of  a  race  of  moral  beings,  coming 
we  know  not  whence,  devoting  itself  to  the  realization  of 
ideals  whose  origins  and  sanctions  are  not  otherwise  ex- 
plained, attaching  a  kind  of  absolute  and  unchanging  value 
to  actions  that  neither  promise  nor,  so  far  as  experience  goes, 
actually  secure  any  appreciable  external  reward ;  and,  as  set 
into  reality  by  its  own  morally  most  worthy  examples, 
pursuing  to  the  death  or  even  beyond  death  a  goal  that  can 
only  be  very  vaguely  imagined,  and  yet  that  somehow  incites 
endeavors  and  elicits  hopes  and  fears  quite  out  of  all  corre- 


536  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

spondence  to  a  reasonable  interpretation  of  man's  workaday 
experiences  with  the  consequences  of  his  own  conduct. 
In  the  words  of  a  recent  Chinese  writer,  the  practice  of  the 
highest  morality  is  not  due  to  interest,  or  because  of  any 
form  of  natural  affection  merely;  it  is  "because  of  the 
spirit  of  nobility  in  the  Superior  Man,  strong  enough  to 
break  in  pieces  stone  and  metal,  and  which  mounts  to  the 
clouds  of  Heaven."  This  is  an  engaging  picture;  but  it 
is  as  mysterious  as  it  is  engaging. 

I  have  already  said  that  undoubtedly  the  Nature  of  the 
Right  must  be  explained  in  accordance  with  our  knowledge 
of  human  nature  in  its  moral  and  social  development.  But  I 
have  also  said  that  unless  one  is  willing  to  leave  human  life 
thus  isolated,  as  it  were,  from  its  own  ultimate  grounds 
and  thus  irrationally  unconscious  of  its  own  profoundest 
significance  and  supreme  destiny,  one  must  so  expand  the 
conception  of  the  Being  of  the  World  —  the  World-Ground, 
the  Absolute  Self  —  as  to  find  in  this  conception  the  perfec- 
tion of  the  task  undertaken  by  the  Philosophy  of  Conduct. 
I  shall,  therefore,  go  on  briefly  to  show  how  all  conceptions 
of  man's  actively  produced  welfare  involve  his  moral  life  ; 
and  how  the  grounding  of  this  moral  life  in  Reality  requires 
the  ideas,  faiths,  and  hopes,  which  the  philosophy  of  religion 
alone  can  furnish. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

THE  ETHICAL  SCIENCES 

The  value  of  many  of  the  positions,  whether  assumed  or 
reached  by  a  course  of  reasoning  in  the  preceding  chapters, 
so  far  as  their  application  to  human  life  is  concerned,  depends 
largely  upon  the  extent  of  the  ground  they  are  permitted  to 
cover.  It  has,  indeed,  been  constantly  maintained  that  the 
sphere  of  ethics  is  coextensive  with  all  human  conduct ;  and 
that  fitness  for  conduct  is  the  most  valuable  possession  and 
most  distinctive  excellence  of  man.  With  the  unfolding  of 
the  total  life  of  the  individual  and  of  society,  therefore,  the 
domain  of  morality  is  constantly  widening ;  and  there  arises 
an  ever  increasing  obligation  and  opportunity  to  make  the 
practices  of  men  serve  the  ideals  of  the  moral  life.  All  the 
analysis  of  moral  selfhood  and  the  descriptive  and  specu- 
lative study  of  the  nature  of  virtue,  its  interests,  and  its  aims, 
has  tended  to  confirm  the  claim  of  a  certain  supremacy  for 
these  moral  ideals. 

The  fact  cannot  be  overlooked,  however,  that  other  branches 
of  the  study  of  human  life,  in  the  most  comprehensive  mean- 
ing of  the  phrase  "  human  life,"  have  their  more  or  less 
distinct  points  of  view  ;  they  feel  themselves  entitled  to  insist 
upon  the  scientific  rights,  and  both  the  scientific  and  the 
practical  benefits  of  this  study  from  their  own  points  of  view. 
Indeed,  the  different  sciences  of  man  in  action  have  struggled 
hard  to  separate  themselves  completely  from  ethical  consider- 
ations ;  just  as  ethics  itself  has  tried  to  get  free  from  the 
influence  and  the  implicates  of  religion  and  of  metaphysics. 


638  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

This  effort  has,  of  late,  been  urged  on  by  a  strong  combina- 
tion of  practical  and  speculative  influences.  The  economical, 
political,  and  social  organizations  of  men  have  rapidly  under- 
gone an  enormous  development.  All  manner  of  financial 
combinations  —  companies,  trusts,  syndicates  —  have  grown 
big  and  grasping  beyond  all  precedent  in  past  time.  The 
aims  of  these  combinations  are,  as  a  matter  of  course,  as 
purely  financial  as  it  is  possible  to  make  them.  Their 
"  legitimate  "  business  is  to  produce  wealth  and  to  distribute 
it  to  their  promoters  and  stockholders.  Their  primary  in- 
terests and  their  distinctive  points  of  view  are  economical 
only;  and  they  are  not  at  all,  or  in  very  scanty  fashion, 
ethical  as  well.  To  promote  the  public  welfare,  or  to  secure 
the  ideal  purity  of  their  administration,  enters  scarcely  to  a 
perceptible  extent  into  their  estimate  of  the  ends  they  wish  to 
serve. 

What  is  true  of  the  financial  combinations  of  men  is  also, 
to  a  large  extent,  true  of  their  political  combinations.  Every- 
where, the  rulers  of  the  nations,  and  all  the  forces  that  chiefly 
control  the  relations  of  nations,  are  eager  to  make  their 
political  combinations  strong,  and  prosperous  commercially, 
with  an  almost  complete  disregard  of  the  bearing  of  moral 
considerations  upon  the  means  to  be  employed  for  the  ac- 
complishment of  their  ends.  Interest  in  ethical  theories  of 
the  state,  or  in  the  serious  consideration  of  the  application  of 
moral  principles  and  moral  ideals  to  the  relations  of  nations, 
is  relatively  languid  and  ineffective,  where  it  is  not  wholly 
wanting  at  the  present  time.  Society  itself  has  recently 
shown  an  almost  overpowering  disinclination  to  regard  its 
own  more  lasting  and  larger  interests  and  aims  from  any 
distinctively  ethical  points  of  view.  With  the  increase  of 
material  prosperity  in  certain  quarters  of  the  globe  there  has 
been  no  corresponding  popular  increase  of  inquiry  into  those 
principles  of  conduct  upon  which  all  social  organizations  have 
their  basis,  and  according  to  which  all  real  social  progress 


THE  ETHICAL  SCIENCES  689 

must  take  place.  With  the  standing  still  or  the  decline  of 
material  prosperity  in  certain  other  quarters  of  the  globe, 
there  has  gone  on  a  corresponding  stagnation  or  decline  in 
the  moral  standards. 

This  condition  of  human  affairs,  economical,  political,  and 
social,  when  regarded  from  the  point  of  view  of  actual  prac- 
tice, has  been  related  as  both  cause  and  effect  to  the  pursuit 
of  the  sciences  of  economics,  politics,  and  sociology  so  called. 
Tlie  scholastic  students  and  recognized  authorities  in  these 
subjects  have  for  the  most  part  come  to  regard  the  problems 
confronting  them,  in  a  totally  unethical  way.  Ethics,  we  have 
seen,  cannot  be  made  an  exact  science  ;  perhaps  —  for  I  have 
shown  how  little  I  care  to  claim  any  right  to  the  term  —  ethics, 
as  the  philosophy  of  human  conduct  cannot  be  made  a  science 
at  all.  Certainly,  in  so  far  as  the  handling  of  its  phenomena 
can  be  subjected  to  scientific  tests,  the  problems  of  ethics  do 
not  admit  of  a  satisfactory  solution  by  the  empirical  method. 
But  it  has  been  the  pardonable,  though  forever  unattainable 
aim  of  economics,  politics,  and  sociology,  to  take  their  place 
among  the  sciences  which  can  claim  to  have  employed  the 
empirical  method  in  the  more  exact  forms  of  this  method. 
The  semblance  of  deductive  and  demonstrative  method  which 
the  older  treatises  on  these  subjects  affected  has  very  properly 
been  abandoned.  Its  results  never  even  attained  the  trust- 
worthy semblance  of  science.  The  inductive  and  historical 
study  of  the  economical,  political,  and  entire  social  aspects  of 
human  life  and  human  development  is  a  very  distinct  advance 
beyond  anything  which  the  older  method  could  hope  to  attain. 
But,  in  their  attempts  so  to  catch  and  represent  the  spirit  of 
the  age  as  to  give  scientific  character  to  their  conclusions 
with  regard  to  the  economic,  political,  and  social  life  of  man, 
without  taking  also  into  account  the  pervasive  and  permanent 
character  of  his  moral  and  spiritual  being,  the  students  of 
these  sciences  will  continue  to  labor  largely  in  vain. 

The  individual  man  in  action,  however  his  action  is  diver- 


540  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

sified  and  to  whatever  end  it  is  directed,  is  a  psychical  unit, 
a  Moral  Self.  And  society,  however  we  may  contest  the 
propriety  of  regarding  it  under  the  figure  of  speech  suggested 
by  the  word  "  organism,"  is  composed  of  such  units.  The 
growth  of  society,  the  progress  of  so-called  civilization  (what- 
ever that  may  be  thought  to  signify),  and  all  the  development 
of  human  institutions  of  every  sort,  are  the  resultants  of  the 
reactions  of  moral  selves  upon  one  another  and  upon  their 
environment.  The  human  individual  and  human  society  can, 
then,  no  more  escape  from  the  sphere  of  ethics  than  (to  bor- 
row an  old  figure  of  speech)  the  greyhound  can  outrun  his 
own  shadow.  Nay  more :  human  society  cannot  exist  or 
continue,  in  any  one  of  its  varied  forms  of  existence  and 
development,  otherwise  than  as  the  construct  of  ethical  beings 
living  together  in  all  the  varied  relations  of  which  their 
ethical  being  makes  them  capable. 

Economics,  politics,  and  sociology,  are,  therefore,  psycho- 
logical and  ethical  studies.  If  they  are  ever  to  attain  the 
coveted  distinction  of  being  called  "  sciences,"  it  must  be 
with  the  same  allowances  made  for  inexactness,  doubt,  and 
growth  upon  the  basis  of  accumulating  experience,  which 
belong  to  all  the  attempts  to  formulate  the  principles  that 
control  the  nature  and  development  of  man,  as  placed  within, 
and  active  in,  his  historical  environment.  These  sciences  can 
never  dispense  with  psychology  and  ethics.  They  can  never 
advance  far  beyond  the  points  of  successful  and  permanent 
construction  provided  for  them  by  psychology  and  ethics. 
Indeed,  one  might  properly  add  the  study  of  the  religious 
nature  and  religious  development  of  man  to  the  list  of  pre- 
requisites for  the  more  successful  cultivation  of  economics, 
politics,  and  sociology.  Certainly  in  India  and  China  no  one 
can  begin  to  comprehend  the  economic,  political,  and  social 
problems  which  there  require  theoretical  and  practical  solu- 
tion, without  understanding  the  ethico-religious  views  and 
practices   of  the  people.     Nor  have  America  and  Europe 


THE  ETHICAL  SCIENCES  641 

yet  become  so  free  from  superstition  or  so  little  religious  that 
the  same  thing  is  not  true  of  their  peoples  also. 

The  attempt  to  render  the  other  principal  sciences  of 
man's  life  and  development  independent  of  ethics  must, 
therefore,  always  and  inevitably  result  in  failure.  The 
claim  to  have  succeeded,  even  partially,  in  this  attempt,  is 
a  sham.  The  continuance  of  the  attempt  is  likely  to  be 
fraught  with  baleful  practical  results.  It  has  already  worked 
a  certain  evil  amongst  the  multitudes  of  men.  The  race  wuU 
never  play  "Hamlet"  with  the  passions,  fears,  faiths,  aspira- 
tions, and  speculations  of  the  hero  left  out.  The  whole  of 
human  history  is  predominatingly  ethical  and  religious  in  its 
motifs  its  tendencies,  its  guiding  forces  and  ideals.  It  is  a 
mixture  of  tragedy  and  comedy,  in  which,  in  every  act  and 
every  scene,  gods  and  godlike  men  and  devils  and  devilish 
men,  are  taking  their  part.  In  the  production  and  distri- 
bution of  wealth,  in  the  formation,  disintegration,  and 
reformation  of  states,  in  the  construction,  improvement,  and 
deterioration  of  social  organizations,  the  ethico-religious 
being  of  humanity  is  always  secretly  or  openly  at  work. 
Therefore,  no  historical  and  empirical  study  of  man's  eco- 
nomic, political,  and  social  constructions  and  developments 
can  be  trustworthy  or  —  much  less  —  complete,  which  does 
not  take  this  ethico-religious  being  into  account. 

The  objection  may  be  urged  against  the  foregoing  view 
that,  although  the  sciences  of  economics,  politics,  and 
sociology,  deal  with  the  description  and  explanation  of 
phenomena  which  are  facts  of  human  conduct,  and  which 
therefore  belong  to  the  proper  sphere  of  ethical  inquiry,  they 
deal  with  these  same  phenomena  from  quite  different  points 
of  view.  In  a  word,  these  sciences  consider  conduct  as 
cause  and  effect  of  economic,  political,  and  sociological 
conditions,  but  without  any  reference  to  its  more  distinctly 
ethical  or  unethical  character.  They  are  sciences  of  actual 
facts,  as  fact;  but  ethics  has  been  defined  as  a  study  of  what 


542  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

ought  to  be  in  human  conduct,  and  of  the  relations  which 
facts  of  conduct  sustain  to  a  developing  ideal.  There  is  a 
certain  measure  of  force  in  this  objection.  But  after  all,  the 
distinction  here  introduced  is  more  fictitious  than  real,  more 
purely  theoretical  than  practicable  in  the  concrete  work  of 
establishing  these  allied  sciences.  For  —  not  to  be  continu- 
ally reiterating  the  statement  of  fundamental  positions  and 
of  conclusions  long  ago  sufficiently  established  —  the  ethical 
feelings,  judgments,  and  moral  choices  of  men,  with  all  their 
unique  psychical  characteristics  and  reactions,  are  pervasive 
and  powerful  facts  affecting  the  whole  of  human  life  and 
human  development,  in  all  manner  of  human  relations.  As 
such,  these  phenomena  determine,  and  are  indeed  integral 
parts  of  all  those  activities  of  men  in  the  relations  to  which 
the  sciences  of  economics,  politics,  and  sociology  give  their 
attention.  The  relations  themselves,  1  affirm,  are  essentially 
and  indissolubly  connected  with,  and  dependent  upon,  the 
ethical  nature  and  ethical  development  of  man. 

The  more  detailed  working-out  of  the  applications  of  ethi- 
cal principles  to  economic,  political,  and  social  conditions, 
belongs  to  the  appointed  task  of  the  students  of  those  condi- 
tions. A  general  treatise  of  ethical  sort,  or  more  especially 
a  philosophy  of  conduct,  cannot  attempt  this  task.  After 
dismissing  as  fallacious  the  general  assumption  that  these 
three  sciences  —  economics,  politics,  and  sociology  —  are 
capable  of  treatment  without  the  assistance  of  ethics,  and 
that  their  ideals  are  realizable  apart  from  the  ethical  ideal, 
I  shall  therefore  content  myself  with  a  few  remarks  upon 
each  of  the  three. 

The  development  of  the  resources  of  any  country  or 
smaller  social  unit,  and  the  distribution  of  the  wealth  thus 
produced,  is  necessarily  always  a  matter  in  which  moral 
forces,  moral  principles,  and  moral  values,  are  deeply  con- 
cerned. For,  in  the  first  place,  a  large  basis  of  fact  and 
law,  physical  and  physiological,  underlies  and  controls  the 


THE  ETHICAL  SCIENCES  543 

actions  of  men  in  those  relations  which  are  dealt  with  by 
economics.  These  same  facts  and  laws  furnish  the  abso- 
lutely rigid,  or  more  elastic  conditions,  under  which  the 
conduct  of  men  shapes  itself  into  the  customary  forms  of 
morals  and  of  moral  development.  For  example,  there  is 
the  entire  sphere  of  the  sexual  relations  in  which  the  close 
connection  of  economics  and  morals  may  be  illustrated ;  and 
here  this  connection  is  made  close  and  permanent  because 
the  same  physical  and  physiological  facts  must  be  considered 
from  both  points  of  view.  The  ethics  of  sexual  intercourse 
and  the  economics  of  sexual  intercourse  are,  to  a  large 
extent,  made  one  by  the  structure  and  functions  of  the 
sexes.  Those  same  natural  differences  of  man  and  woman 
which  determine  their  relative  values  in  the  economical  scale 
decide  also,  in  large  measure,  the  right  and  wrong  of  their 
conduct  in  their  mutual  relations.  The  relative  helplessness 
of  the  human  infant,  and  the  relatively  long  time  which  it 
needs  in  order  to  develop  to  a  fitness  for  self-help,  is  also 
of  both  economic  and  moral  significance.  Thus  the  same 
group  of  unalterable  and  indisputable  physical  facts  deter- 
mines both  the  ethics  of  the  family  life,  and  also  the  eco- 
nomics of  the  family  in  its  relations  to  the  production  and 
distribution  of  domestic  and  national  wealth.  And  in  spite 
of  the  present  vast  and  far-reaching  disturbance  of  old-time 
views  concerning  both  these  aspects  of  the  relations  of  the 
sexes,  there  are  unmistakable  signs  of  a  preparation  on  the 
part  of  the  natural  laws  to  reassert  their  supremacy.  No 
economical  changes  can  be  lastingly  successful,  from  the 
point  of  view  of  economics,  which  violate  those  ethical  prin- 
ciples regarding  right  relations  of  man  and  woman,  and  of 
the  family  life,  which  the  race  has  won  through  centuries  of 
experiment  and  struggle  in  its  pursuit  of  ethical  ideals. 
This  is  because  both  the  ethics  and  the  economics  of  family 
life  rest  upon  the  bed-rock  of  unalterable  physical  and 
physiological  preconditions. 


644  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

Were  it  necessary  —  as,  indeed,  it  vrould  be  if  one  were 
making  a  detailed  study  of  the  ethics  of  economics  —  it  could 
be  shown  how  the  same  principle  admits  of  varied  illustra- 
tion and  application  in  many  of  the  relations  which  men,  as 
moral  selves,  sustain  to  one  another.  But  it  will  serve  the 
present  purpose  better  if  we  invert  somewhat  the  terms  of 
the  proposition  and  consider,  in  the  second  place,  how  im- 
possible it  is  to  make  the  conduct  of  men  ethically  correct, 
or  to  secure  a  progressive  correspondence  with  the  rising 
and  changing  moral  ideals,  without  regard  for  the  facts  and 
laws  appertaining  especially  to  that  experience  of  the  race 
with  which  the  science  of  economics  deals.  Men  are  uni- 
versally and  unchangeably  obligated  to  the  virtues  of  wis- 
dom, prudence,  fidelity,  justice,  and  kindness.  But,  as  has 
already  been  shown  with  abundant  illustration  and  argument, 
there  is  no  infallible  and  a  priori  way  of  determining  just 
what  conduct  is  wise,  prudent,  faithful,  just,  and  truly  kind, 
in  any  particular  combination  of  circumstances.  The  rather 
is  it  true  that,  in  the  effort  to  put  into  practice  the  disposi- 
tion toward  these  virtues,  some  of  the  severest  conflicts  of 
duty  arise.  Now  these  same  virtuous  forms  of  conduct  have 
also  the  very  highest  economical  value.  Judged  by  historical 
and  empirical  standards,  and  without  neglecting  well-founded 
deductive  arguments,  the  most  successful  development  and 
the  most  satisfactory  distribution  of  any  country's  resources 
depend  upon  the  actual  exercise  of  these  virtues  by  the  people 
themselves.  Nothing  is  more  foreboding  of  economical 
evils,  or  more  certain  to  be  disastrous  in  its  final  results, 
than  the  too  prevalent  impression  that  individuals  or  nations 
may  attain  the  highest  lasting  economic  prosperity  without 
the  assiduous  practice  of  the  cardinal  virtues.  Over  and  over 
again  has  it  been  demonstrated  in  the  history  of  the  race 
that  nations  must,  in  the  long  run,  pay  back  every  dollar  of 
treasure  and  every  drop  of  blood  of  which  they  have  possessed 
themselves  in  disregard  of  fundamental  ethical  principles. 


THE  ETHICAL  SCIENCES  645 

This  close  and  permanent  relation  between  ethics  and 
economics  makes  the  two  reciprocally  dependent.  Ethics 
prescribes  for  economics  those  ideals  of  the  virtuous  life, 
that  pattern  of  dutiful  moral  selves  living  together  in  a 
variety  of  social  relations  which  has  been  for  unnumbered 
centuries  rising  and  gathering  clearness  and  strength  in  the 
consciousness  of  the  race.  Economics  teaches  ethics  by  what 
more  precise  forms  of  conduct,  and  under  what  particular 
kinds  of  physical  environment,  the  means  may  be  secured 
and  employed,  for  the  better  realization  of  these  ideals;  — 
but  this,  only  in  a  given  class  of  human  relations,  viz., 
those  which  concern  the  development  and  distribution  of 
material  resources.  Thus  it  comes  about  that,  to  disregard 
the  influence  of  the  ethical  ideals  which  are  set  by  such 
conceptions  of  the  virtuous  life  as  answer  to  these  words,  — 
wisdom,  prudence,  fidelity,  justice,  and  kindness,  —  is  bad 
economical  policy.  But  how  to  make  these  virtues  effective 
requires  that  good  men  should  have  some  knowledge  of 
economical  principles.  Ethics  must  inspire  economics  with 
its  ideals,  must  soften  and  vitalize  its  otherwise  hard  and 
even  brutal  formulas,  must  inform  it  of  the  higher  obliga- 
tions which  rightfully  assert  an  ever-increasing  supremacy 
over  the  lower  passions  and  desires.  Ethics  must  rebuke 
and  chasten  economics  when,  as  so  often  happens,  it  tends 
to  forget  that  selves  can  never  be  treated  as  mere  things; 
and  that  there  are  loftier  considerations  for  individuals  and 
for  nations  than  the  unrestricted  increase  of  their  material 
prosperity.  On  the  other  hand,  the  virtues  which  secure 
material  prosperity  cannot  be  practised  in  those  relations  with 
which  economical  science  deals  without  instruction  from  this 
science  as  to  how  the  practice  is  to  be  shaped  and  is  most 
successfully  to  be  secured. 

There  is  probably  no  other  land  where  the  reciprocal  rela- 
tions and  influences  of  economics  and  the  ethico-religious 
life  of  the  people  are  so  curiously,  and  in  such  a  complicated 

35 


646  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

matter,  intertwined  as  among  that  conglomerate  of  peoples 
called  India.  How  shall  the  improved  sanitary  and  eco- 
nomical condition  of  the  multitudes  be  brought  about  in 
social  organizations  where  the  power  of  the  money-lender 
and  of  the  grain-merchant  is  chiefly  conferred  through  the 
dominant  and  oppressive  regard  for  quasi-religious  functions ; 
where,  for  example,  millions  would  rather  die  of  starvation 
themselves  than  kill  a  cow  for  food ;  where  the  management 
of  the  sewers  is  likely  to  set  the  entire  body  politic  aflame 
with  a  quasi-ethical  zeal  for  rebellion;  and  where  bubonic 
plague  runs  riot,  and  the  crops  of  the  starving  are  allowed 
to  be  ruined,  because  the  extermination  of  rats  is  forbidden 
by  established  moral  and  religious  principles  ?  But  what  is 
true  in  such  exaggerated  form  of  India  is  essentially  true 
of  all  peoples  in  all  ages.  The  development  and  distribu- 
tion of  their  material  resources  cannot  be  considered  irre- 
spective of  the  influences  constantly  exerted  by  moral 
forces.  Nor  can  the  peoples  themselves  develop  the  higher 
qualities  of  ethical  judgment  and  sound  moral  practice 
without  instruction  as  to  economical  laws  and  economical 
conditions. 

The  great  economical  problem  of  the  present  age  is  most 
distinctly  an  ethical  problem.  In  the  more  prosperous 
nations,  and  between  all  nations,  this  problem  concerns 
the  distribution  rather  than  the  production  of  the  world's 
resources.  The  development  of  physical  means  for  effecting 
this  distribution  makes  the  problem  more  distinctively 
ethical.  And  all  the  subordinate  problems  —  for  example, 
of  the  tariff,  taxation,  reprisals  and  wars  for  commercial 
aggrandizement  and  supremacy,  are  great  moral  questions. 
That  they  are  so  little  considered  from  the  ethical  point  of 
view,  and  in  the  light  of  the  practicable  ideals  of  the  vir- 
tuous life,  is  the  principal  economic  shame  and  menace  of 
the  present  age. 

What  has  been  said  of  ethics  and  economics,  in  respect 


THE  ETHICAL  SCIENCES  547 

of  their  relations  to  each  other,  is  also  true  of  ethics  and 
Politics.  Politics,  or  the  science  of  human  conduct  under 
the  relations  of  "statehood"  (including  municipal  and  all 
other  forms  of  governmental  organization),  has  its  own  basis 
of  physical  facts  and  physical  laws.  And  right  conduct  for 
the  citizen,  whether  ruler  or  subject,  in  all  the  various  rela- 
tions under  which  men  are  organized  politically,  is  impos- 
sible in  disregard  of  this  basis  of  facts  and  laws.  The  same 
environment  forms  the  inescapable  conditions  of  the  moral 
life  and  of  the  political  life.  The  same  physical  conditions 
surround  the  individual,  and  determine  the  quality  and  the 
consequences  of  his  conduct,  whether  he  be  considered  as 
citizen  of  a  state  or  as  one  of  many  moral  selves  in  the  looser 
relations  of  society  so-called. 

If,  moreover,  we  consider  the  psychological  and  social 
origins  and  development  of  the  state,  the  necessarily  ethical 
character  of  the  science  of  politics  becomes  yet  more  obvious. 
It  is  not  by  the  enactment  of  contracts  which  are  motived 
and  controlled  by  purely  utilitarian  conditions,  and  even 
less  through  the  pressure  of  force  and  necessity  in  a  purely 
physical  or  brutal  way,  that  men  come  to  associate  them- 
selves together  politically.  The  rather  does  the  state  have 
its  origin  in  obedience  to  a  command  that  is  respected  as 
divine,  in  filial  and  devoted  affection  toward  the  head  of  the 
family  or  toward  one's  dead  ancestors,  and  in  loyalty  to  the 
leaders  of  the  tribe. ^  But  these  feelings  and  forms  of  action 
spring  from  the  nature  of  the  moral  Self  in  its  social  rela- 
tions with  other  moral  selves.  The  origin  of  the  state  is, 
then,  distinctly  ethical.  So,  too,  does  the  character  of  its 
development  depend  in  a  very  important,  if  not  absolute 
way,  upon  the  moral  status  and  moral  progress  of  its 
individual  members;  even  more  upon  those  prevalent  cus- 
toms and  current  standards  of  opinion  which  represent  the 
moral  culture  of  the  people  at  large. 

1  Comp.  Wundt,  Ethics,  I,  p.  279  f. 


548  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

That  the  scientific  treatment  of  political  phenomena  is 
pre-eminently  an  ethical  discipline  has  aways  been  acknowl- 
edged. So  truly,  and  to  such  an  extent,  is  the  connection 
between  ethics  and  politics  to  be  maintained  that  it  is 
difficult,  as  well  with  respect  to  their  history  as  their  con- 
ception, to  separate  between  the  two.  Plato's  Republic  is  a 
discussion  of  Justice  "writ  large."  Now  "Politics,"  says 
Aristotle,^  "seems  to  answer  to  this  description,"  —  namely, 
that  of  the  "master-science"  of  the  final  ends  of  all  action, 
of  human  life  itself.  Ethics  is,  then,  "a  sort  of  political 
inquiry."  The  Confucian  ethics,  as  it  has  developed  in 
China  and  Japan,  is  political.  And  Christian  ethics,  in  its 
conception  of  the  divine  Family  including  all  men,  or  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God,  obviously  and  in  a  very  pregnant  manner 
extends  the  doctrine  of  responsible  conduct  over  all  the 
relations  which  are  covered  by  any  of  the  several  forms  of 
statehood  among  men.  Indeed,  "the  self-acknowledgment 
of  the  state  that  it  is  a  moral  institution"  ought  to  be  so 
firmly  established  as  never  again  to  be  questioned. 

The  ideals  of  human  political  organizations  are  also  ethi- 
cal ideals.  The  moral  ends  of  statehood  have,  in  fact,  been 
progressively  more  clearly  defined  and  more  emphasized 
during  the  political  evolution  of  mankind.  Any  tendency 
to  dispute  or  to  depreciate  this  profound  truth  is,  however 
much  such  a  tendency  may  refer  to  the  "  illumination  ideas  " 
of  the  eighteenth  or  any  other  century,  a  distinct  retrograda- 
tion  in  political  theory.  Neither  commercial  prosperity,  nor 
the  spread  of  intellectual  enlightenment,  can  serve  by  itself 
to  suffice  the  final  purposes  of  political  organizations  among 
men.  And  Japan,  which  still  insists  upon  ethico-political 
instruction  for  the  citizen  from  the  earliest  to  the  latest 
periods  of  his  education,  is  clearly  entitled  in  this  regard  to 
serve  as  a  model  for  other  nations. 

It  is  by  no  means  clear  that  there  is  a  science  which  may 

1  Nic.  Eth.,  I,  ii,  5,  9. 


THE  ETHICAL  SCIENCES  649 

properly  be  called  "sociology,"  or  " societology, "  or  by  some 
similar  term.  If  the  intention  is  to  apply  such  terms  to  all 
attempts  at  a  scientific  treatment  of  the  conception  of  human 
society,  or  of  the  actual  historical  development  of  human 
social  organizations,  or  of  the  physical  and  psychological 
conditions  of  their  origin  and  evolution,  then  we  are  met  at 
the  beginning  of  all  such  attempts  by  these  essential  facts: 
(1)  all  the  physical  sciences  which  relate  to  man's  environ- 
ment upon  the  earth  serve  as  introductory  or  essential  parts 
of  the  so-called  science  of  "sociology;"  and  all  the  sciences 
of  human  nature  are  allied  branches  of  it.  But  (2)  defined 
in  this  way  (which  is  almost  equivalent  to  its  not  being 
defined  at  all)  sociology  seems  to  lose  all  claim  whatever  to 
a  definite  scientific  character,  and  to  merge  itself,  so  far  as 
it  is  scientifia  at  all,  in  certain  other  more  particular  and 
definite  sciences;  and,  finally,  (3)  so  far  as  it  remains 
sociology^  the  result  degenerates  into  propositions  of  a  very 
indefinite  and  disputable,  or  purely  speculative  character. 
A  specific  science,  deserving  this  particular  name,  can 
therefore  scarcely  be  said  to  claim  either  existence  or 
raison  d^etre. 

The  term  "  society  "  properly  applies  to  a  number  of  per- 
sons who  are  associated  together  for  whatever  purpose  or  by 
whatever  connection  or  bond.  In  the  very  conception  the 
two  important  words  are  persons  and  association ;  associated 
selves  constitute  every  kind  of  a  society.  The  conception, 
therefore,  is  essentially  psychological  and  ethical.  Human 
society,  of  every  description  and  in  every  stage  and  era  of 
its  development,  is  constituted  by  moral  beings  who  conduct 
themselves  in  common  relations  to  some  environment,  and 
in  reciprocal  relations  toward  one  another,  for  the  attain- 
ment of  some  end.  Of  societies  there  exist  in  fact  in- 
numerable kinds;  and  the  several  kinds,  as  well  as  the 
multiplications  within  the  area  of  the  same  kind,  are  cease- 
lessly coming  into  existence,  running  their  more  or  less  brief 


550  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

course,  and  passing  to  their  end.  Society,  spelled  with  a 
capital  S,  has  no  existence,  and  no  chance  for  existence, 
except  in  the  theoretical  imagination  ot  the  individual  man. 
In  the  wider  significance  of  the  word  "social,"  all  human 
life  and  human  activity,  under  anything  resembling  normal 
conditions,  is  necessarily  social.  At  his  birth,  in  his  train- 
ing, in  his  activities  and  aims,  the  human  being  is  con- 
stantly forming  and  breaking  these  different  associations 
with  those  of  his  own  kind.  But  all  this  falls  within  the 
sphere  of  conduct.  Therefore,  whatever  one  may  mean  by 
the  science  or  theory  of  Society  —  whether  it  be  a  study  of 
the  abstract  conception  connoted  by  the  term,  or  of  the 
actual  physical  and  psychical  conditions  which  environ  all 
the  different  associations  of  men,  or  of  the  historical  devel- 
opment of  some  selected  few  of  the  many  forms  of  human 
social  organization  —  this  science  or  theory  cannot  separate 
itself  from  ethics. 

As  I  have  already  said,  a  general  treatise  of  the  philosophy 
of  conduct  cannot  expound  or  vindicate  in  detail  the  ethical 
character  of  economics,  politics,  and  so-called  sociology. 
They  are,  indeed,  all  ethical  sciences,  or  studies  of  the  con- 
ditions, laws,  results,  and  ideals  of  men  —  of  moral  selves  — 
in  their  various  relations  of  a  more  particular  or  a  more 
general  social  order.  It  is  enough  for  my  purpose  at  the 
present  time  to  have  indicated  how  wide  and  inclusive  is 
the  sphere,  how  theoretically  and  practically  important  are 
the  principles  and  ideals,  of  the  moral  life  and  moral  devel- 
opment of  man.  Neither  in  his  economic,  nor  his  political, 
nor  in  any  of  his  other  varied  social  relations  can  man  escape 
the  necessity,  or  deny  himself  the  high  privilege  of  paying 
regard  to  the  laws  and  ideals  of  morality.  As  a  tradesman, 
as  a  citizen,  as  a  member  of  many  forms  of  society,  he  is 
always  a  Moral  Self;  and  not  the  pursuit  of  happiness  for 
himself  alone  or  for  others,  or  the  mere  keeping  of  a  Law, 
however  austere  or  lofty,  can  wholly  take  the  place  of  the 


THE  ETHICAL  SCIENCES  651 

supreme  Ideal  of  conduct.  As  Mr.  Shadworth  Hodgson  has 
said :  ^  Ethics  is  "  a  science  which  is  supreme  over  the  whole 
of  human  practice. "  Economics,  politics,  and  sociology,  are 
therefore  ethical  studies ;  and  so  far  as  the  ideals  which  they 
hold  up  before  humanity  are  realizable  as  results  of  human 
conduct,  they  are  subordinate  parts  of  the  Ideal  of  Ethics. 

^  Metaphysics  of  Experience,  III,  p.  214. 


CHAPTER   XXIV 

MORALITY  AND  RELIGION 

What  Pfleiderer  ^  calls  the  "  positivisfc  view  "  —  namely, 
"that  at  first  religion  and  morality  had  little  or  nothing 
to  do  with  each  other,"  he  declares  to  be  contradicted 
by  everything  we  know  of  the  early  history  of  mankind. 
Indeed,  the  same  authority  has  previously  ^  asserted  the 
truth  of  exactly  the  opposite  proposition:  "The  historical 
beginning  of  all  morality  is  to  be  found  in  religion."  In  a 
more  qualified  and  cautious  way  we  find  Wundt  affirming  in 
his  treatise  of  Ethics :  ^  "  History  shows  that  almost  all,  and 
especially  all  the  more  significant  forms  of  life  have  their 
root  in  religious  motives  that  have  disappeared  from  the 
consciousness  of  a  later  age;  and  thus  teaches  that  man's 
self-education  in  custom  and  morality  begins  with  the  devel- 
opment of  religious  worship."  And  Waitz,^  who  speaks 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  most  sane  and  accomplished 
student  of  anthropology,  declares :  "  There  is  hardly  a  more 
trustworthy  sign  and  a  safer  criterion  of  the  civilization 
of  a  people  than  the  degree  in  which  the  demands  of  pure 
morality  are  supported  by  their  religion  and  are  interwoven 
with  their  religious  life."  That  admirable  little  book  by 
Roskoff  ^  shows  how,  in  the  natural  order  of  the  development 

1  See  The  Philosophy  of  Religion  (translation  from  the  second  edition  by  A. 
Menzies)  IV,  p.  238. 

2  Ibid.,  IV,  230. 
8  I,  p.  134. 

*  Anthropologie  der  Natnrvolker,  IV,  p.  128. 

^  Das  Religionswesen  der  rohesten  Natnrvolker,  p.  175. 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  668 

of  human  life,  "Custom  and  the  Law  receive  divine  sanction, 
the  connection  between  religion  and  morality  is  placed  in 
clear  light,  and  the  two  appear  in  their  reciprocal  relation. " 

The  historical  facts  which  compel  some  such  conclusion  as 
the  foregoing  are  undoubted.  The  current  anthropological 
teachings  which  either  overlook  or  minimize  the  conclusions 
that  follow  logically  from  these  facts  deserve  the  severest 
testing,  if  not  the  promptest  rejection.  There  are  two 
views,  however,  about  the  more  important  and  permanent 
relations  of  morality  and  religion  which  must  be  regarded  as 
representing  two  about  equally  unwarrantable  extremes.  In 
treating  briefly  of  them,  and  in  proposing  the  true  opinion, 
which  mediates  and  reconciles  these  extremes,  I  shall  con- 
tinue to  take  the  ethical  point  of  view.  The  more  full 
discussion  of  the  entire  subject  belongs  to  the  historical  and 
theoretical  study  of  the  phenomena  of  man's  religious  life  — 
to  the  so-called  philosophy  of  religion.  But  its  importance 
as  bearing  upon  the  ultimate  problems  of  a  philosophy  of 
conduct,  and  especially  as  affecting  one's  views  of  the  origin, 
sanctions,  and  final  purpose  of  morality,  and  of  the  nature  of 
the  moral  Ideal,  cannot  be  overestimated. 

Of  the  two  extreme  views  one  advocates  the  complete 
separability  of  morality  and  religion;  the  other,  their  com- 
plete identification.  The  former  is  not  held  solely  by  those 
who  incline  to  that  philosophical  point  of  view  adopted  by 
the  Positivists  which  Pfleiderer  controverts ;  it  is  held  by  a 
certain  select  few  who  are  purely  and  somewhat  passionately 
devoted  to  the  Moral  Ideal,  but  who  find  themselves  more 
or  less  unwillingly  agnostic  concerning  the  fundamental 
verities  of  the  religious  life;  and  it  is  also  held  by  an 
increasing  multitude  who  tolerate  the  customary  and  con- 
ventional opinions  of  their  class  respecting  moral  problems 
and  moral  practices,  but  do  not  bother  themselves  at  all 
about  religious  affairs.  The  opposite  view  which  identifies 
morality  and  religion   throughout — the  ground,  the   sane- 


654  PHILOSOPHY   OF  CONDUCT 

tions,  the  meaning,  and  the  ideal  of  both  —  has  customarily 
been  promulgated  by  two  classes  of  thinkers  and  writers; 
these  are  the  theologians  and  certain  idealistic  moralists. 
The  former  ordinarily  choose  to  identify  morality  and  reli- 
gion by  making  religion  absorb  morality.  They  find  in 
their  conceptions  of  God  and  of  his  relations  to  humanity 
the  full,  and  the  only  account  of  the  origin,  sanctions, 
worth,  and  ideals,  of  the  moral  life  and  moral  development 
of  man.  But  the  latter  identify  morality  and  religion  by 
making  morality  absorb  religion.  Religion  as  theoretical, 
as  a  metaphysics  or  a  reasoned  system  or  a  faith,  is  with 
them  nothing  more  or  less  than  an  ethical  view  of  the  world- 
order.  And  God,  if  he  is  not  Himself  identified  with  the 
moral  world-order  (the  "  power  not-ourselves  that  makes  for 
righteousness''),  is  of  use,  so  to  say,  only  as  the  postulate, 
and  the  vindicator  of  the  moral  consciousness. 

It  will  be  found,  I  think,  that  most  of  the  confusion  and 
the  antagonisms  over  the  problems  involved  in  defining  the 
relations  of  morality  and  religion  arise  in  too  narrow  and 
one-sided  views  of  human  nature  and  of  its  complex  inter- 
ests, activities,  and  forms  of  development.  In  a  technical 
word,  they  are  primarily  psychological.  Here,  as  everywhere, 
philosophy  goes  back  to  the  full  and  rich  knowledge  of  the 
Self,  if  it  would  escape  the  severest  pains  of  disappointment 
and  the  direst  disasters  of  controversy.  "Know  thyself"  — 
the  full,  richly  endowed  Self,  sensuous,  intellectual,  artistic, 
social,  but  also  hoth  moral  and  religious,  and  yet  always  a 
unity  of  selfhood  in  a  course  of  development ;  it  is  because 
they  neglect,  or  are  ignorant  of  the  choicest  deliverances  of 
self-study  that  so  many  go  astray  over  this  subject.^ 

The  historical  facts  of  man's  moral  and  religious  devel- 

1  If  theologians,  moralists,  and  anthropologists  alike  were  only  also  psycholo- 
gists, and  familiar  with  the  broader  fields  of  those  sciences  that  treat  of  the  soul 
of  man,  there  would  be  less  of  unjustifiable  assurance  on  some  points,  and  more 
of  certainty  and  agreement  on  others,  in  their  average  discourses  about  the  rela- 
tions of  morality  and  religion. 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  655 

opment  lay  the  basis  for  that  psychological  theory  of  the 
relations  between  morality  and  religion  which  must  itself 
serve,  in  turn,  as  an  important  part  of  the  basis  on  which 
to  rest  our  conclusions  respecting  the  ultimate  problems  of 
ethics.  The  nature  of  these  historical  facts  has  been  in- 
dicated in  the  opening  paragraph  of  this  chapter.  It  is 
desirable  that  they  should  be  presented  here  in  somewhat 
more  of  detail. 

But,  first  of  all,  it  should  be  understood  —  what  a  serious 
study  of  the  nature  and  development  of  human  religious 
consciousness  establishes  beyond  doubt  —  that  man,  as  man, 
is  essentially  and  everywhere  a  religious  being.  Just  as 
surely  as  all  men  are  speech-making  and  speech-using,  are 
instinctively  and  naively  metaphysical,  and  are  moral  and 
social  in  their  nature  and  in  their  institutions,  just  so  surely 
are  all  men  also  religious.  Religion  is,  with  man,  no 
adventitious  or  temporary  thing;  it  belongs  to  man  as  man; 
it  is  implanted  in  his  constitution,  that  he  should  seek  after 
and  believe  in  the  "Over-natural,"  which  is  the  hidden 
Spirit  and  Life  of  all  that  appears  in  his  experience.  And, 
furthermore,  the  roots  of  man's  religious  nature,  and  the 
sources  and  sanctions  of  man's  religious  experience,  are  not 
exhaustively  to  be  found  in  any  single  form  of  natural  func- 
tioning, or  in  any  one  aspect  of  his  unfolding  life.  Not 
intellect  alone,  or  feeling  alone,  or  the  necessities  and  out- 
come of  the  practical  life  alone,  but  all  together  as  allied 
forms  of  the  activity  of  the  one  soul  of  man,  furnish  the 
sources  from  which  his  religious  experience  arises,  and  in 
which  it  finds  its  sustenance  and  growth.  No  wonder,  then, 
the  nature  and  origin  of  religion  being  such,  that  morality 
and  religion  are  so  closely  and  even  indissolubly  allied  in 
the  experience  of  the  individual  and  in  the  history  of  the 
race.  But  all  the  more  because  both  morality  and  religion 
spring  out  of  the  complex  being  of  man  as  reacting  in  mani- 
fold ways  upon  its  physical  and  social  environment,  and 


556  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

because  both  derive  their  discipline  and  their  culture  from 
the  same  complex  history  of  man's  development,  do  they 
differ  in  a  variety  of  secondary  but  by  no  means  unimportant 
ways. 

The  history  of  humanity  shows  that  morality  and  religion 
have,  in  fact,  to  a  large  extent  a  common  origin.  As  I  have 
already  said,  the  opinion  of  Saussaye  and  others,  which  was 
always  based  entirely  on  a  priori  grounds,  that  morality  and 
religion  had  a  separate  origin  and  were  later  forced  into 
union  by  the  environment,  as  it  were,  is  disproved  by  many 
facts  of  history.  The  nature-myth,  for  example,  has  always 
served  as  a  common  root  for  both.  In  this  myth,  some 
natural  power  or  natural  phenomenon  is  deified  and  made 
the  object  of  religious  feeling  and  religious  worship;  but 
man's  welfare,  as  dependent  upon  his  own  conduct,  is  neces- 
sarily more  or  less  connected  with  every  such  myth.  Hence 
morality  and  religion  find  in  every  such  work  of  thought  and 
imagination  a  common  root.  Nor  does  it  even  hold  true,  as 
Wundt  seems  to  suppose,  ^  that  the  separation  of  the  nature- 
god  from  the  natural  phenomenon  is  necessary  before  ethical 
ideas  can  be  connected  with  him. 

Again,  human  virtues  become  embodied  or  peculiarly 
exemplified  in  different  divinities,  because  these  divinities 
have  themselves  been  idealized  in  different  ways.  And  thus 
the  hero-legend  may  become  a  root  out  of  which  grows  a 
closely  connected  development  of  religion  and  morality.  In 
this  way  respect  for  the  virtues  of  courage  and  courageous 
efforts  in  behalf  of  others  became  connected  with  legends  of 
the  god  Heracles.  Where  the  idealization  is  more  complete 
in  the  interests  both  of  religion  and  morality,  we  may  have 
some  important  aspect  of  the  divine  Being  represented,  and 
its  corresponding  form  of  virtuous  life  commended  and 
enforced  by  a  particular  divine  example.  Thus  the  merciful 
and  pitiful  side  of  God,   and  the  duties  and  blessings  of 

1  Ethics,  I,  p.  86  f. 


MORALITY  AND  EELIGION  667 

raercy  and  pity,  are  presented  by  the  Buddhistic  conception 
and  worship  of  Kwannon.  The  same  thing  is  seen  in  the 
worship  of  Mary  as  the  embodiment  of  the  motherly  tender- 
ness of  God. 

Wherever  reverence  for  ancestors,  and  the  continued  feel- 
ing of  filial  piety  toward  them  after  death,  are  prevalent 
and  influential  —  and  this  is  the  case  among  many  peoples 
—  these  feelings  furnish  a  vigorous  common  root  for  morality 
and  religion.  Cruelty  to  one's  aged  ancestors  uniformly 
marks  the  lowest  depths  of  barbarous  immorality.  And,  as 
especially  among  the  Japanese  and  Chinese,  fidelity  to  the 
Emperor,  the  daimyo,  the  head  of  the  clan,  becomes  the 
central  principle  of  morality.  Whenever  the  bodily  pres- 
ence on  which  it  is  concentrated  is  removed  from  sight,  this 
reverence  takes  to  itself  more  of  that  feeling  of  mystery, 
that  respect  for  the  invisible,  that  veneration  before  the 
worth  of  unseen  realities,  which  is  of  the  very  essence  of  the 
religious  life.  In  support  of  this  view  reference  might  be 
made  to  the  standing  which  the  genii,  the  manes,  the  lares 
and  penates,  of  ancient  Rome  had  in  the  moral  and  religious 
development  of  its  people.  In  this  way  the  deified  ancestors 
or  idealized  human  beings  of  any  people  become  moral  ideals 
and  set  the  standards  of  accepted  customs  and  moral  laws, 
either  by  depressing  or  elevating  or  otherwise  modifying 
them. 

In  these  and  numerous  other  ways  the  close  historical 
connections  between  morality  and  religion,  which  may  be 
traced  from  the  recorded  beginnings  of  human  history,  have 
been  brought  about.  Thus  it  has  been  made  true  in  fact 
that  no  system  of  religious  doctrine,  or  set  of  rules  and 
observances  for  the  practice  of  religion  exists,  which  does 
not  involve  ethical  principles,  enjoin  duties,  and  inculcate 
virtues.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  difficult,  if  not  impossible, 
to  live  virtuously  in  any  social  organization  without  giving 
some  practical  recognition  to  the  current  religious  beliefs 


558  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

and  practices.  But  this  truth,  which  is  merely  the  expres- 
sion of  historical  facts  —  a  sort  of  general  fact  of  anthro- 
pology —  has  its  own  explanation  in  considerations  that  are 
permanent  and  lie  deep  down  in  human  nature.  It  is  all 
the  more  necessary  to  insist  upon  this  conclusion  because  it 
is  often  assumed  that,  whatever  may  have  been  the  case  in 
the  earlier  and  cruder  stages  of  man's  social  evolution,  the 
progressive  divorce  of  morality  and  religion  is  sure  to  be 
accomplished  and  greatly  to  be  desired.  This  assumption 
cannot  be  justified.  It  is  made  improbable,  or  even  impos- 
sible, by  what  we  are  constantly  learning  as  to  the  origin 
and  laws  of  the  development  of  the  total  moral  and  social 
selfhood  of  man.  A  long  treatise  would  be  needed  even 
summarily  to  present  in  its  full  force  the  argument  for  our 
contention,  but  it  can  be  maintained.  We  may  not  identify 
morality  and  religion;  we  must  not  absorb  either  one  in  the 
other,  or  cultivate  one  to  the  exclusion  of  the  other ;  but,  on 
the  other  hand,  we  can  never  divorce  morality  from  religion, 
or  safely  fail  to  recognize  both  theoretically  and  practically 
the  dependence  of  morality  upon  religion. 

We  have  seen  that  the  essence  of  morality  consists  in  an 
intelligent  and  voluntary  devotion  to  an  ideal  of  conduct;  and 
that  this  ideal  of  conduct  is  the  conscious  life  of  a  Moral  Self 
which  is  functioning  in  all  its  relations  toward  other  selves 
in  the  social  organization  so  as  most  perfectly  to  realize  this 
ideal.  But  religion,  in  its  more  primitive  forms,  is  belief 
in  the  real  existence  of  superhuman  beings,  of  the  "Over- 
man ; "  this  belief  is  joined  to  the  feelings  of  fear  or  rever- 
ence, dependence,  trust,  and  love  or  dread,  which  arise  out  of 
the  belief;  and  it  expresses  itself  in  certain  acts  of  worship, 
allegiance,  and  obedience.  In  both  morality  and  religion 
the  Ideal  is  a  personal  affair,  and  one  which  calls  for  an 
adjustment  of  relations  toward  it  that  involve  in  a  large  way 
the  entire  sphere  of  human  experience.  "  But  that  which  is 
a  demand  in  morals  becomes  a  reality  in  religion."     And 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  569 

other  important  differences  between  the  two  attitudes  of 
mind  and  of  life  toward  their  respective  ideals  might  be 
noticed.  What  most  impresses  the  student  of  the  philosophy 
of  conduct,  however,  is  the  essential  likeness  of  the  two. 

For,  in  the  first  place,  morality  and  religion  have  much 
the  same  psychological  origin.  The  truth  is  not  simply 
that  they  are  both  outputs  of  the  same  soul  of  man,  as  he 
is  surrounded  by  the  same  physical  and  social  environment 
and  develops  within  the  one  general  course  of  human 
history.  Morality  and  religion  have  yet  more  profound  and 
sensitive  connections  in  human  nature.  The  roots  of  the 
two  are  intertwined  in  similar  instincts,  feelings,  faiths, 
and  other  experiences.  Nor  can  the  whole  case  be  summed 
up  by  saying  with  Paulsen r^  "Both  spring  from  the  same 
root,  the  yearning  of  the  will  for  perfectio7i.^*  This  is  too 
vague  and  mystical.  There  are,  at  least,  two  specific  forms 
of  human  feeling  —  constitutional  and  universal  even  in  the 
lowest  stage  of  social  relations  —  which  form  a  twin  root  for 
uniting  morality  and  religion.  These  are  fear  and  piety. 
The  former  is  the  more  simple  in  structure,  but  is  exceed- 
ingly varied  in  its  manifestation ;  the  latter  is  more  complex 
and  includes  elements  from  several  primitive  forms  of  emo- 
tion, such  as  admiration,  sympathy,  respect,  and  even  the 
more  refined  forms  of  fear  itself  —  namely,  reverence  and 
awe.  The  very  nature  of  the  invisible  and  unknown  powers 
which  are  symbolized  by  material  or  personal  forms  is  such 
as  to  excite  feelings  of  more  or  less  lively  fear.  Their 
wishes  can  be  only  imperfectly  learned;  their  commands 
must  be  received  and  interpreted  in  a  somewhat  mysterious 
way.  Hence  the  more  potent  is  the  fear  they  inspire,  and 
the  greater  the  need  of  man's  care  that  their  mandates  are 
understood  and  obeyed.  God,  or  the  gods,  cannot  be  rendered 
intelligible  to  human  understanding  without  conceding  the 
essential  likeness  of  divine  and  human  selfhood;  but  God, 
1  See  Paulsen,  A  System  of  Ethics,  p.  419. 


660  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

or  the  gods,  cannot  inspire  the  religious  feeling  without 
being  conceived  of  as  superior  to  man.  How  exceedingly 
similar  in  both  respects— -in  respect  of  its  likeness  to  man 
and  in  respect  of  its  superiority  to  man  —  is  that  ideal  Moral 
Self  which  each  one  somehow,  and  to  some  extent,  fears  and 
reverences ;  whether  this  Ideal  takes  the  subjective  form  of 
the  mandate  of  conscience,  or  assumes  the  more  objective 
representation  of  the  better  part  of  society  commanding 
the  individual's  allegiance  and  judging  and  punishing  his 
misdeeds ! 

In  the  broader  meaning  of  the  word,  however,  it  is  some 
kind  of  piety  which  most  allures  men  to  righteousness  and 
also  deters  them  from  vice  and  crime.  In  spite  of  the  cold 
and  hard  impersonal  character  to  duty  upon  which  Kant  and 
the  legalists  in  ethics  generally  insist,  it  is  a  loyal  and 
affectionate  regard  for  personal  considerations  which  secures 
both  the  lower  and  commoner,  as  well  as  the  higher  and 
rarer,  forms  of  morality  among  men.  Domestic  loyalty  and 
domestic  affection,  the  courageous  and  faithful  allegiance 
to  the  interests  of  the  tribe  or  other  social  organization,  the 
trusty  and  loving  service  of  others,  in  a  word,  Piety ^  is  the 
summing-up  of  all  virtuousness  for  the  multitude  of  men  in 
the  majority  of  their  daily  transactions.  But  when  this 
personal  interest  is  concentrated  upon  the  deified  ancestor, 
or  the  gods  of  the  tribe,  or  of  the  particular  tribal  or  national 
religion,  but  —  more  especially  —  when  it  becomes  a  supreme 
and  passionate  devotion  to  the  service  of  the  one  true  God, 
although  such  service  is  called  "religion,"  its  moral  charac- 
ter and  influence  over  the  life  of  conduct  is  not  so  essentially 
changed. 

Nor  are  the  character  and  the  influence  of  that  complex 
attitude  of  soul  toward  personal  interests,  which  I  have 
called  piety,  essentially  altered  by  the  most  thorough  cul- 
ture and  supremely  worthy  development  of  both  the  moral 
and  the  religious  life.     Regarded  as  morality^  the  culture  of 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  561 

piety  extends  the  affectionate  respect  for  personal  life  far 
beyond  the  narrow  circle  of  the  deceased  members  of  one's 
own  tribe  or  family,  into  the  wider  circle  of  all  sentient 
and  rational  being.  The  truly  pious  heart  of  the  cultured 
good  man  feels  the  obligation  to  virtue  as  having  for  its 
object  the  whole  of  mankind.  Such  is  in  large  degree  the 
true  thought  which  Kant  reaches  when,  in  the  Second  Sec- 
tion of  his  Metaphysic  of  Morals  he  changes  his  point  of 
view  and  his  theory  besides:  for,  having  before  made  the 
essence  of  morality  to  consist  in  a  too  unfeeling  and  purely 
rational  (in  the  narrow  meaning  of  this  word)  respect  for  an 
impersonal  Law,  he  now  recognizes  the  truth  that  morality 
is  essentially  an  intelligent  and  rational  regard  for  the 
interests  of  a  Kingdom  of  Selves,  an  ideal  of  personal 
dignity  and  worth.  Personality  is  the  only  true  sphere  of 
ends  that  are  absolute  and  final.  But  regarded  as  religion, 
the  culture  of  piety  reaches  substantially  the  same  point  of 
view,  the  same  temper  of  mind,  the  same  spirit  of  de- 
votion to  an  essentially  identical  ideal.  For  the  deified 
ancestors,  or  the  gods  of  the  tribe,  or  the  nature-gods,  let  us 
substitute  the  cultured  monotheistic  conception,  and  con- 
sider the  attitude  toward  the  World  and  toward  Life,  which 
properly  accompanies  this  conception.  Now  the  supreme 
motive  to  goodness  becomes  the  adoring  and  loving  service 
of  the  One  Personal  Absolute  who,  although  He  is  the  alone 
Absolutely  Good,  shares  his  goodness  with  all  finite  sentient 
and  personal  life,  and  thus  assigns  to  them  as  well  as  to 
Himself  the  feeling  and  the  exercises  of  piety,  in  the 
religious  meaning  of  that  word. 

The  close  relation  between  morality  and  religion,  and  yet 
the  infelicity  of  a  complete  identification  and  the  complete 
impossibility  of  a  divorce  of  the  two,  may  now  be  made 
clearer  in  a  somewhat  different  way.  Let  us,  then,  raise 
and  briefly  answer  the  following  question:  What  effect,  if 
granted,  do  the  postulates  of  religion  have  upon  the  concep- 

86 


662  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

tions  and  principles  of  ethics  ?  That  the  great  majority  of 
men  have  always  accepted,  and  to  a  certain  extent  acted 
upon  these  postulates,  is  one  of  the  plainest  general  facts  of 
human  history.  Nor  is  there  sufficient  reason  extant  —  no 
matter  how  enormous  one  may  estimate  the  opposing  influ- 
ences to  be  —  for  believing  that  any  considerable  number  of 
the  human  race  will  succeed  in  divesting  their  minds  or 
their  lives  of  the  influence  from  these  postulates.  The 
question  we  have  just  raised  is,  therefore,  most  important 
for  the  student  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct  who  wishes  to 
understand  its  profounder  and  more  difficult  problems  while, 
at  the  same  time,  not  removing  his  point  of  view  from  the 
ground  of  actual  human  experiences. 

The  case  may  be  briefly  stated  as  follows:  Man  is,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  a  moral  being.  Man  is  also,  as  an  equally 
sure  matter  of  fact,  a  religious  being.  But  man  is,  con- 
sidered as  an  individual,  a  unique  kind  of  unity.  And  the 
human  species,  considered  in  its  specific  characteristics  and 
specific  development,  is  a  looser  but  no  less  real  kind  of  a 
unity.  Now  in  human  history  these  two  aspects  of  human 
nature  and  of  human  development  have  always  been  most 
closely  allied,  most  powerful  in  their  reciprocal  influence. 
Suppose  that  the  inquirer  professes  —  and  to  this  there  is 
perhaps  no  objection,  but  several  considerations  in  its  favor 
—  to  be  a  man  of  faith,  or  even  of  alleged  knowledge  lead- 
ing to  indubitable  convictions,  in  matters  of  morality;  and 
that  the  same  inquirer  has  little  aptitude,  and  perhaps  no 
taste  and  scanty  respect  for  religious  truth,  and  for  the  life 
that  grows  out  of  such  truth;  at  any  rate  he  must  be  pre- 
pared to  face  the  facts,  and  all  the  facts,  of  a  human  ex- 
perience which  is  always,  in  the  large,  both  ethical  and 
religious.  Let  such  an  inquirer  consider,  then,  certain 
religious  truths  as  mere  postulates;  and  let  him  also  con- 
sider the  practices  which,  in  fact,  grow  out  of  these  post- 
ulates   as    concessions  to    the    faiths,    fears,     hopes,    and 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  563 

aspirations  of  humanity.  What  follows  from  these  postulates 
within  the  more  definite  and  special  sphere  of  human  con- 
duct as  studied  from  the  moralist's  point  of  view  ? 

In  answer  to  such  a  question  as  that  which  has  just  been 
raised  one  may  confidently  say,  first :  A  certain  considerable 
class  of  new  duties  and  of  new  ethical  problems  are  now 
forced  prominently  upon  the  attention.  These  duties  and 
problems  are  not  "  new  "  in  the  chronological  meaning  of  the 
word  ;  on  the  contrary,  they  are  as  old  as  the  history  of  the 
race  itself.  They  are  logically  new  only  to  the  mind  which 
has  accustomed  itself  to  separate  the  faiths  and  practices  of 
the  popular  religious  life  from  all  its  own  conceptions  and 
principles  regarding  what  are  the  essentially  right  and  wrong 
forms  of  human  conduct.  These  duties  and  problems  of  duty 
which  uniformly  arise  out  of  the  current  religious  faiths 
and  practices,  even  when  one  considers  the  latter  as  merely 
postulated,  are  too  complex  and  varied  to  admit  of  easy 
classification.  I  shall,  however,  mention  three  classes  which 
will  serve,  at  least,  to  illustrate  my  meaning. 

And,  first,  religion,  as  both  faith  and  practice,  creates  a 
multitude  of  associated  members  within  the  larger  social 
organization,  whose  duties,  when  considered  from  the  re- 
ligious point  of  view,  become  special ;  and  who,  by  their  very 
existence,  also  create  a  special  class  of  duties  toward  them- 
selves on  the  part  of  the  other  members  of  the  same  social 
organization.  Such  persons  are  the  priests,  prophets,  min- 
isters, acolytes,  and  religious  devotees ;  as  well  as  pre- 
eminently the  authorities  and  rulers  in  the  different  religious 
associations  whatever  the  character  of  the  religion  in  ques- 
tion may  be.  The  situation  is  rendered  more  perplexing 
ethically  by  any  sort  of  union  between  Church  and  State. 
Granted  only  the  existence  of  any  class  of  specialized  per- 
sons,—  such  existence  is  everywhere  a  fact  that  must  be 
reckoned  with,  —  and  the  treatment  which  they  receive  from 
the   individual,    from    society,  and  from    the    government, 


664  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

becomes  a  complicated  problem  in  morals.  It  is  utterly  vain 
and  unhistorical  —  whether  it  be  impious,  or  not  —  to  reason 
theoretically,  or  to  practise  as  though  this  class  were,  under 
any  existing  circumstances  or  under  any  circumstances  likely 
to  exist,  to  be  treated  precisely  like  all  other  classes.  All 
morality,  as  we  have  repeatedly  seen,  is  special  in  its  appli- 
cation. The  outcry  against  priestcraft  and  against  the  dom- 
ination of  the  ecclesiastic  is  indeed  warranted  by  the  facts  of 
history.  The  throes  of  the  governments  of  the  nations  in 
their  efforts  to  rid  themselves  of  this  domination  are  indeed 
pitiful.  The  hatred  and  despite  of  it  are  largely  pardonable, 
if  not  wholly  justifiable,  in  view  of  human  experience.  But 
the  throes  and  the  woes  of  the  peoples  in  their  efforts  to 
obtain  freedom  from  all  special  obligations  to  the  classes 
which  represent  religious  ideals  and  religious  authority  are 
no  more  severe  and  pitiful  than  the  throes  and  the  woes  of 
those  who  imagine  themselves  permanently  to  have  effected 
at  least  in  this  more  external  regard,  a  complete  divorce 
between  morality  and  religion.  To  establish  this  conclusion, 
witness  the  French  Revolution.  And  it  is  unwise,  with  that 
unwisdom  which  is  saddest  of  all  because  it  overlooks  or 
despises  the  teachings  of  history,  for  either  France  or  the 
United  States  to-day  to  think  it  possible  to  treat  the  religious 
associations  of  the  former  country,  or  the  religious  orders  in 
the  newly  acquired  territory  of  the  latter  country,  otherwise 
than  as  affording  a  very  special  and  complex  ethical  problem. 
The  individual  man  who  prizes  and  cultivates  the  pious  life, 
whether  from  the  dominatingly  moral  or  the  religious  point 
of  view,  is  sure  to  lose  something  from  his  morals  without 
gaining  anything  for  his  claim  to  superior  intelligence,  by 
refusing  practical  recognition  to  any  sincere  and  faithful 
representative  of  the  religious  organization  and  religious 
development  of  humanity.  Nor  can  the  student  of  the  phil- 
osophy of  conduct  fail  to  sympathize  with  the  advocates  of  a 
freer  course  for  the  religious  life  and  of  more  recognition  for 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  665 

spiritual  authority  in  any  fair  and  reasonable  contest  with  the 
rule  of  *'  blood  and  iron." 

In  the  second  place,  by  far  the  majority  in  the  different 
larger  social  and  political  organizations  of  men  recognize 
their  obligation  to  perform  certain  acts  as  so-called  religious 
duties.  This  is  to  a  great  extent  true  in  the  most  "  irre- 
ligious communities."  Impiety  toward  tlie  gods  and  im- 
piety toward  man  show  essentially  the  same  spirit;  they 
march  hand  in  hand  ;  they  grow  strong  and  insolent  in  each 
other's  company.  But  in  many  communities  the  sphere  of 
conduct  over  which  these  more  definitely  religious  duties 
spread  themselves  constitutes  a  large  portion  of  the  practical 
life.  The  example  of  the  Hindu  religion  in  India  may 
be  referred  to  again  in  this  connection.  "  He,"  says  the 
Egyptian  '*  Book  of  the  Dead,"  — "  he  who  blasphemes  the 
king,  his  father,  or  his  god,  he  who  lends  his  ear  to  evil  and 
remains  deaf  to  the  words  of  truth  and  righteousness,  he  who 
hurts  his  neighbor  or  despises  the  gods  in  his  heart,  he  can- 
not enter  into  the  dwellings  of  the  blessed  dead."  Such  sins 
as  these  are  violations  of  piety  in  both  its  moral  and  its 
religious  aspect.  And  although  this  code  is  largely  negative 
—  a  forbidding  of  immoral  conduct  in  the  name  of  religious 
authority  and  with  religious  sanctions  —  there  is  abundant 
evidence  to  show  that  the  same  relation  maintains  itself  be- 
tween the  more  positive  injunctions  of  religion  and  the 
equally  positive  injunctions  of  morality.  In  the  lower  as 
well  as  the  higher  stages  of  ethico-religious  development 
human  experience  is  essentially  the  same.  The  tattooing 
of  savages,  for  example,  is  in  many  instances  a  quasi- 
religious  rite  made  obligatory  at  puberty  as  a  matter  of 
practice.  Who  can  fail  to  regard  the  practice  as  much  more 
respectable  on  this  account  than  when  indulged  in  by  the 
modern  English  lady  or  gentleman  —  the  motive  being  in 
this  case  a  fashionable  fad?  Again,  are  the  lascivious 
dances  which  are  so  widely  prevalent  in   connection  with 


666  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

certain  forms  of  religions  cult  any  more  reprehensible  from 
the  ethical  point  of  view  than  are  the  scarcely  less  indecent 
recreations  of  much  of  so-called  "  polite  society  "  ? 

Many  similar  illustrations,  although  important,  are  com- 
paratively trivial  when  contrasted  with  those  more  profound 
and  pervasive  obligations   that  command   certain   forms   of 
conduct  and  forbid  others,  which  grow  by  necessity  out  of 
the  accepted  religious  faiths  and  religious  cult  of  any  com- 
munity.    In  China  to-day,  the  binding  relations  to  the  family 
and  to  the  clan,  which  are  the  most  powerful  factors  in  de- 
termining the  characteristics  and  consequences  of  the  national 
life,  are   of   a  quasi-veWgious  sort.     The  whole  structure  of 
society  reposes  upon  the  foundations  that  are  cemented  by 
these  obligations.     The  case  of  ancient  Rome  was  not  unlike 
this.     In  Russia  at  the  present  time  it  is  a  pious  devotion, 
showing  itself  in  manifold  forms  of  conduct,  of  suffering  and 
of  self-denial  toward  the  *'  Holy  Church  "  and  the  Czar,  the 
ruler  and  father  of  his  people,  which  holds  the  social  struc- 
ture compacted  together.     Even  in  Western  Europe  and  in 
America  the  conduct  of  the  daily  life  of  the  multitude  in  all 
their  economic,  political,  and  social  relations,  is  either  dictated 
or  commended  and  reinforced,  or  else  restrained  and  rebuked 
by  the  prevalent  religious  ideas.     And  whoever  determines  to 
live  a  jpurely  moral  life,  and  yet  keep  himself  free  from  the 
influence  of  these  ideas  and  the  practices  corresponding  to 
them,  attempts  a  wholly  impossible  task.     The  popular  faiths 
may  not  be  his  faiths ;  the  prevalent  cults  he  may  despise ; 
the  common  practices  he  may  regard  as  of  doubtful  validity 
and  usefulness  from  his  own  ethical  point  of  view.     But  he 
can  scarcely  aim  to  live  the  virtuous  life  —  much  less,  meet 
with  any  satisfying  success  in  the  realization  of  this  aim  — 
without  making  some  of  these  faiths  the  practical  postulates 
of  his  own  morality. 

Yet  further,  in  the  third  place,  the  influence  of  the  preva- 
lent religious  faiths  and  practices  over  the  duties  and  prob- 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  667 

lems  of  ethics  is  felt  when  one  considers  how  the  religious 
point  of  view  modifies  the  scope  and  the  character  of  ethical 
opinion  and  ethical  discussion.  If  there  is  a  God,  and  if  the 
religious  life  is  to  be  considered  essential  to  all  morally  right 
living,  then  human  opinions  and  points  of  view  respecting 
many  an  ethical  problem  are  liable  to  undergo  important 
changes.  The  influence  of  the  religious  postulates  is  enor- 
mous here.  The  very  conclusion  of  the  Kantian  criticism  is 
this  :  opine,  believe  and  act  as  though  God  were,  and  as  though 
He  were  the  absolute  Moral  Reason,  the  Guardian  and  Judge 
of  righteousness  among  men.  In  the  field  of  pure  reason  this 
criticism  leads  to  a  most  thorough-going  agnosticism ;  in 
spite  of  which,  however,  the  fundamental  ethico-religious 
faiths  of  humanity  in  God,  Freedom,  and  Immortality,  are 
reinstated  in  the  form  of  necessary  postulates  of  the  universal 
practical  reason.  One  may  accept,  or  not,  the  critical  method 
of  Kant  and  his  followers.  One  may  feel  warranted,  or 
not,  in  rejecting  the  agnostic  conclusion.  But  one  cannot 
wholly  fail  of  respecting  and  adopting  the  practical  postulate : 
Opine,  reason,  and  behave,  as  though  the  origin,  sanctions, 
principles,  and  sure  evolution  of  man's  moral  life  and  moral 
ideals  were  not  in  himself  alone  or  in  the  structure  of  mate- 
rial things ;  but,  the  rather,  as  though  they  had  their  ground 
in  the  Being  of  that  Personal  Absolute  whom  religion  believes 
in,  and  worships  as  God.  And,  indeed,  to  do  otherwise  than 
this,  to  make  more  than  a  pretence  of  the  total  rejection  of 
this  practical  postulate,  in  the  large  and  for  any  long  time, 
would  seem  to  be  impossible  for  the  Imman  race. 

Nor  is  the  explanation  hard  to  find  of  the  remarkable  te- 
nacity with  which  the  mind  of  man  clings  to  opinions  and 
theories  which  imply  that  man's  moral  life  is  neither  alien 
nor  indifferent  to  the  superior  Spiritual  Being  in  which  reli- 
gion believes.  Men  have  hard  work  to  withhold  the  religious 
nature  from  all  influence  over  their  opinions  in  the  more 
purely  scientific  fields  of  experience.     The  particular  sciences 


568  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

do,  indeed,  deal  primarily  with  what  is  considered  to  be  mere 
truth  of  actuality  ;  their  so-called  laws  are  descriptions  of  the 
general  facts  of  human  experience.  But  the  shadow  of  the 
Ideal  which  is  at  the  same  time  an  illuminating  centre,  is 
over  them  all.  In  their  orderly  behavior,  and  in  the  concep- 
tions of  sublimity  which  they  incite,  "  the  heavens  declare  the 
glory  of  God  and  the  firmament  showeth  his  handiwork." 
Art  and  ethics,  however,  when  we  attempt  to  treat  thought- 
fully and  methodically  their  phenomena,  reveal  themselves  as 
belonging  to  the  spheres  into  which  reach  upward  the  ideals 
of  man.  But  the  supreme  and  all-comprehending  Ideal-Real, 
the  Reality  which  stands  as  the  correlate,  in  the  thought 
and  imagination  of  men,  of  all  their  loftiest  and  worthiest 
ideals,  is  the  object  of  their  religious  faith,  contemplation,  and 
service.  So  that  their  opinions  as  to  the  verities  of  art  and 
of  morals  cannot  possibly  escape  all  important  influence  from 
the  religious  life. 

In  scores  and  hundreds  of  small  practical  ways,  and  in  a 
manner  closely  fitting  to  the  details  of  daily  life,  what  men 
believe  and  feel  about  the  faiths  and  practices  of  religion 
influences  their  judgments  and  practices  in  matters  of  con- 
duct. Of  this  it  is  scarcely  necessary  to  give  illustrations; 
and  to  the  fundamental  principles  involved  in  these  related 
experiences  I  shall  return  in  other  connections.  The  rankest 
atheist,  the  most  confirmed  agnostic,  cannot  judge  himself  or 
others,  and  behave  toward  others,  as  though  there  were  abso- 
lutely no  "  soul  of  truth  "  in  the  religious  faiths  and  practices 
of  his  fellow  men. 

What  is  true  of  ethical  views  and  moral  practices,  respect- 
ing their  dependence  upon  the  postulates  of  religion,  is 
emphatically  true  also  of  the  sanctions  of  morality.  The 
sanctions  of  conduct  become  profoundly  modified,  and  greatly 
reinforced  by  taking  the  religious  point  of  view  from  which  to 
regard  them.  Standing  in  fear  and  awe  before  mere  mystery 
the  ancient  Hebrews  could  speak  of  the  thunder  as  the  "  voice 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  669 

of  Yahveh."  The  more  interior  and  penetrating  view  of  the 
sources  for  that  mandatory  character  which  the  moral  con- 
sciousness not  infrequently  assumes  has  led  to  the  popular 
regard  of  conscience  as  the  "  voice  of  God."  Questions  of 
casuistry,  as  well  as  questions  of  profit  and  of  destiny,  have 
often  enough  been  relegated  to  diviners  and  priests  who 
settle  them  by  declaring  the  divine  will.  Not  only  does  the 
Chinese  merchant  try  his  prospective  luck,  in  lottery  fashion 
before  the  idol  in  the  temple ;  but  the  devout  worshipper  who 
doubts  as  to  what  in  some  particular  emergency  his  duty 
may  be,  asks,  "Lord,  what  wilt  thou  have  me  to  do?"  If 
the  pious  soul  can  discover  the  divine  will  it  is  satisfied  that 
it  has  the  right  side  of  the  problem  of  conduct ;  —  and  this, 
oftentimes,  even  when  the  judgment  of  the  multitude  or  of 
the  wise  men  is  on  the  other  side.  There  are  few  things  at 
once  more  pathetic  and  more  dignified  in  human  history  than 
the  position  on  questions  of  right  and  wrong  which  have  been 
taken,  in  loneliness,  by  the  always  few  devoted  followers  of 
the  Lord,  when  the  popular  declarations  were  all  the  other 
way.  On  God's  side  stood  the  Hebrew  prophets  when  his 
people  were  against  Him  respecting  the  moral  issues  of 
their  day.  On  God's  side  stood  Socrates,  satisfied  that  the 
sanctifying  testimony  of  the  daemon  within  him  was  ideally 
better  to  follow,  even  at  the  cost  of  life,  than  the  judgments 
of  the  Athenian  demos.  On  God's  side  stood  Martin  Luther 
and  felt  that  it  was  enough  that  he  could  do  no  otherwise. 
But  in  less  conspicuous  and  in  historically  unimportant  ways 
thousands  of  plain  men  and  women  are  constantly  trying 
to  invoke  the  divine  sanctions  upon  their  conduct  of  the  path 
of  life.  And  these  are  by  no  means  they  who  are  least  intel- 
ligent or  least  successful  in  the  practical  solution  of  those 
questions  of  right  conduct  which  so  frequently  perplex  us  all. 
The  undoubted  fact  that  many  crimes  against  the  moral 
ideal  have  been  committed  in  the  name  of  religion  does  not 
diminish  but  rather  increases  the  force  of  our  argument. 


570  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

Crimes  innumerable  have  also  been  committed  in  the  name 
of  freedom.  This  statement  is  true,  whether  such  crimes 
arise  out  of  ignorance  or  out  of  more  purely  immoral  im- 
pulses. Human  experience  shows,  in  a  historical  way,  that 
neither  religion  nor  political  freedom  can  safely  be  estranged 
from  a  cultivated  intelligence  and  a  sound  moral  con- 
sciousness. Where,  as  so  frequently  happens,  the  breaches 
of  the  moral  code  are  indefensible  when  viewed  in  the  light 
of  the  moral  ideal,  but  are  made  under  the  impulse  of  a  sin- 
cere religious  zeal,  the  whole  phenomenon  illustrates  anew 
the  close  relations  which  exist  between  morality  and  religion 
so  far  as  the  sanctions  of  both  are  concerned.  Saul,  when  he 
persecuted  the  followers  of  Jesus,  thinking  thus  to  do  God 
service,  is  as  forceful  an  illustration  of  this  relation  as  Paul 
when,  the  most  notable  follower  of  the  same  Jesus,  he  is  ready 
himself  to  be  "  offered  up  for  his  sake."  Immoral  religion  and 
irreligious  morality  —  if  one  may  be  tolerated  for  the  time  in 
forming  such  conjunctions  of  words  —  are  inept  verbal  link- 
ings  together  of  different  aspects  of  human  nature  which,  in 
their  more  fundamental  relations,  are  somewhat  indissolubly 
united. 

Connected  with  the  same  considerations  is  the  almost 
world-wide  experience  that  a  certain  purity  of  heart  and  purifi- 
cation of  life  is  deemed  necessary  by  religion  in  approaching 
the  gods,  and  in  all  manner  of  divine  service.  This  purity 
is,  indeed,  too  often  merely  formal  and  ceremonial ;  and  the 
external  purifications  are  too  often  made  the  substitute  for  a 
real  improvement  in  the  motives  and  principles  of  conduct,  if 
not  a  cover  for  positive  immoralities  to  hide  themselves  behind. 
It  is  true  also  that  an  excessively  emotional  religious  expe- 
rience not  infrequently,  instead  of  warming  and  vivifying  the 
sources  of  right  conduct,  makes  the  more  pliable  or  fluid 
those  barriers  which  sound  judgment,  and  the  evolution  of 
morally  superior  customs  have  erected  against  wrong  conduct. 
In  all  such  cases,  however,  it  is  doubtful  how  much,  what  can 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  671 

properly  be  esteemed  religious  faith,  and  even  what  can  prop- 
erly be  called  religious  fervor  has  to  answer  in  its  own  right 
for  that  lowering  of  moral  tone  and  those  excesses  of  license 
which  have  become  connected  with  it.  Phallic  worship  and 
the  vile  practices  in  the  name,  and  to  the  honor  of  the  gods, 
which  are  its  accompaniment,  have  undoubtedly  in  various 
places  been  an  almost  integral  part  of  the  worship  of  nature. 
In  Syria,  Assyria,  and  Old  Japan,  this  was  so.  In  India  to- 
day there  are  religious  rites  and  religious  festivals  not  a  few, 
as  well  as  surviving  customary  privileges  of  the  B  rah  mans, 
which  are  the  occasions  of  gross  and  bestial  immoralities. 
The  presence  of  the  lingam  lingers  everywhere  in  the  land. 
But  it  is  by  no  means  easy  in  most  of  these  instances  to  de- 
termine how  far  the  real  causes  for  the  lowering  of  the  standard 
of  the  public  morals  can  rightly  be  attributed  to  the  prevalent 
religion.  The  worship  of  Krishna  has  undoubtedly  been  the 
patron  of  debauchery.  But  the  existing  debauchery  in  the 
hearts  and  lives  of  both  priests  and  people  accounts,  in  turn, 
for  the  impurities  of  the  god  Krishna. 

However,  then,  one  may  be  disposed  to  distribute  the  re- 
sponsibility for  a  degradation  of  the  popular  conduct  between 
morality  and  religion  —  the  two  aspects  of  the  one  moral  and 
religious  Selfhood  of  man  in  his  social  relations  and  social 
organization  —  one  cannot  fail  to  be  impressed  chiefly  with 
another  and  opposing  current  of  influences.  In  general,  re- 
ligion has  stood  for  a  more  or  less  sincere  purity  of  heart, 
and  for  a  more  or  less  serious  and  effective  attempt  at  purifi- 
cation of  the  moral  life.  In  all  forms  of  religion  which  have 
passed  beyond  the  very  lowest  stages  in  the  evolution  of 
man's  moral  life,  it  has  been  held  that  purity  of  soul  is 
necessary  for  acceptable  worship  of  the  gods ;  and  the  effect 
of  this  admission  has  been  most  powerful  over  the  historical 
development  of  the  popular  morals.  For  as  the  bard  who 
sang  thousands  of  years  ago  in  the  Odyssey  (III.  48)  well 
knew :  "  All  men  long  after  the  gods."     The  tribute  paid  by 


672  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

the  chorus  in  Sophocles'  "  King  Oedipus  "  to  the  power  of 
religious  feeling  is  as  rational  philosophically  as  it  is  poeti- 
cally beautiful 

"  Oh  may  I  live 
Sinless  and  pure  in  every  word  and  deed, 
Ordained  by  those  firm  laws  that  hold  their  realm  on  high  ! 
Begotten  of  heaven,  of  brightest  ether  born, 
Created  not  of  man's  ephemeral  mould. 
They  ne'er  shall  sink  to  slumber  in  oblivion ; 
A  power  of  God  is  there,  untouched  by  Time." 

The  gods  are,  indeed,  always,  in  respect  of  some  of  the  forms 
of  the  virtuous  life,  above  man  as  he  actually  is ;  they  belong 
to  the  "  Overman,"  to  the  kingdom  of  human  ideals.  Thus, 
the  desire  of  intercourse  with  these  divine  beings,  the  wish 
to  stand  well  with  them,  and  the  fear  of  their  disfavor,  — 
all  of  the  motives  belonging  to  the  more  especially  religious 
experience  of  humanity,  —  are  essentially  and  permanently 
enlisted  on  the  side  of  a  higher  than  the  prevalent  standard 
of  morality  among  men. 

Were  examples  needed,  they  might  be  given,  almost  with- 
out limit,  of  the  powerful  influence  which  religion  has  ex- 
ercised in  purifying  morals  and  uplifting  the  moral  ideal. 
India,  the  land  where  religion  remains  so  largely  identified 
with  mere  form  and  ceremonial,  and  so  largely  deprived  of 
its  legitimate  good  influences  over  the  popular  morals,  is  by 
no  means  an  exception  to  this  rule.  On  the  contrary,  its  best 
religious  teachers  have  always  held  that  without  purity  of 
heart  no  man  shall  see  the  Lord;  and  that  unless  religion 
shows  itself  in  a  real  improvement  of  the  moral  life,  it  is 
spurious  and  vain.  According  to  Hindu  doctrine,  the  *^  holy 
man"  is  indeed  Sattwik  ("  liaving  a  healthy  taste")  as 
respects  his  diet ;  he  "  likes  food  that  promotes  longevity, 
tranquillity,  strength,  freedom  from  disease  and  cheerfulness, 
—  food  that  is  palatable,  soothing,  nourisliing,  and  cheering." 
He  has  also  been  taught  precisely  how  to  regulate  his  breath- 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  ^78 

ing,  his  dress,  his  gestures,  his  entire  life  in  its  details. 
There  is  bondage  in  all  this.  But  the  Hindu  doctrine  also 
teaches,  that  *'  tliere  is  only  one  kind  of  bondage  in  the  world, 
viz.,  the  bondage  of  passions  and  no  other.  '*  Freed  from  the 
control  of  desires,  like  the  moon  emerged  from  murky  clouds, 
the  man  of  wisdom,  purged  of  all  stains,  lives  in  patient  ex- 
pectation of  his  time."  And  the  summing-up  of  all  the 
morality  which  grows  out  of  true  religion  is  this : 

"  I.    Let  not  adversity  and  temptations  bend  you. 

"II.  Divest  yourself  of  stiffening  pride  and  hardening 
selfishness. 

"  III.  Do  not  seek  your  own  glory,  but  the  glory  of  your 
fellow  brothers.'* 

Summarized  and  translated  into  the  hortatory  principle  of 
religious  devotion,  these  maxims  become :  ^  "Do  all  works 
and  at  all  times  under  His  shelter,  and  then  by  His  Grace 
you  will  be  saved." 

I  am  sure  also  that  the  practical  insufficiency  of  morality 
to  sustain  and  elevate  its  own  principles  without  support  and 
help  from  religion  can  be  shown  by  an  appeal  to  almost  all 
the  human  experience  which  illustrates  this  subject.  How- 
convincing  is  the  testimony  of  history  to  this  truth  has 
already  been  made  the  subject  of  remark.  The  depen- 
dence of  the  morals  of  the  state  on  the  popular  teachings 
with  respect  to  the  nature  of  God  and  of  man's  relation  to 
Him  is  emphasized  and  illustrated  toward  the  close  of  the 
Second  Book  of  Plato's  Republic,  although  in  a  negative  way. 
If  lies  and  lying  vanities  are  not  to  be  tolerated  among  the 
citizens,  all  men  must  know  that  "  the  superhuman  and  divine 
is  absolutely  incapable  of  falsehood."  Later  (III,  391)  Plato 
declares  that  stories  about  the  immoral  conduct  of  the  gods 
"  are  likely  to  have  a  bad  effect  on  those  who  hear  them  ;  for 
everybody  will  begin  to  excuse  his  own  vices  when  he  is  con- 
vinced that  similar  wickednesses  are  always  being  perpetrated 
1  Compare  the  Bhagavad  Gita,  chap,  xviii,  verse  56. 


574  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

by  the  kindred  of  the  gods."  That  is  to  say,  such  false 
opinions  in  religion  are  the  equivalent  of  a  lowering  of  the 
moral  ideal  in  its  effect  upon  the  morals  of  society. 

But  more  positively  we  may  say,  and  may  place  our  declar- 
ation upon  an  empirical  and  historical  basis :  Human  moral- 
ity has  unceasing  need  of  religion  for  its  better  support  and 
more  effective  triumph  over  all  the  weaknesses  and  tempta- 
tions which  assault  and  try  the  very  foundations  upon  which 
it  reposes  its  rules  for  the  practical  life.  It  is  cold,  hard 
work  for  the  human  soul,  and  frightfully  difficult  and  unsafe 
for  human  society  to  try  to  lead  the  virtuous  life  strenuously 
and  perfectly,  and  to  hold  up  and  advance  the  moral  ideals, 
without  the  faiths,  consolations,  and  cheer,  which  religion 
has  to  offer.  Who  can  deny  that,  if  we  may  believe  in  God 
as  the  Righteous  One,  as  the  Vindicator  and  Guardian  of 
righteousness  and  at  the  same  time  the  pitiful  and  gracious 
Father  of  men,  and  if  we  may  hold  to  the  hope  of  the  triumph 
at  the  last  of  his  Kingdom,  as  the  reign  over  all  rational 
spirits,  of  righteousness,  truth,  and  peace,  then  living  accord- 
ing to  our  lights  upon  moral  principles,  and  pursuing  tirelessly 
and  loyally  the  highest  Moral  Ideal,  is  a  less  distressing  — 
nay !  a  far  more  hopeful,  sure,  and  joyful  thing  ?  The 
strongest  in  the  race  for  moral  perfection  get  weary  and 
even  discouraged  at  times.  The  most  loyal  suffer,  in  certain 
moments  of  defeat,  the  almost  irresistible  temptation  to 
strike  the  colors  which  they  have  held  up  in  the  service  of 
their  lord  and  master.  Duty.  What  if  humanity  goes  all  the 
more  to  the  dogs,  or  to  the  devil,  because  I  decline  to  bear 
extreme  hardship  or  stand  in  my  post  as  a  suffering  soldier 
in  its  behalf  ?  Why  should  I  concern  myself  ?  Whence 
comes  this  unceasing  and  unsparing  obligation  to  an  Ideal 
that  grows  the  more  exacting  for  the  individual  and  the  race, 
the  more  the  individual  and  the  race  rise  through  sweat,  and 
toil,  and  infinite  loss  of  treasure  and  blood,  toward  its  allur- 
ing embrace  ?    How  can  the  moral  Law  dare  to  impose  upon 


MORALITY  AND   RELIGION  675 

the  quivering  flesh  and  sensitive  soul  of  the  world's  best  and 
noblest,  the  seemingly  unreasonable  sanction  of  its  imperative 
demands  ?  Surely  the  thoughtful  man  must  find  in  such  ques- 
tions as  these  the  true  metaphysical  riddles  of  the  universe. 
Not  in  the  nature  of  space,  or  of  matter,  or  of  the  hypotheti- 
cal atom,  do  the  most  puzzling  of  all  problems  lie  concealed. 
They  consist  rather  in  the  practical  antinomies  of  the  moral 
nature  and  moral  development  of  the  race.  And  yet  the 
enliglitened  moral  consciousness  somehow  feels  that  the  last 
thing  which  the  rational  Self  can  afford  to  let  slip,  or  even  to 
loosen  its  firm  grip  upon,  is  the  Moral  Ideal.  This  Ideal  is 
vague,  changeable,  and  elusive ;  it  partakes  of  the  nature  of 
the  Infinite  from  which  it  comes.  But  it  is  both  alluring  and 
commanding ;  and  wholly  to  let  it  go  is  damnation  for  the 
individual  and  for  society  —  sure  and  swift,  and  already  well 
on  the  way  to  completion. 

To  one  whose  position  toward  the  moral  Law  and  the 
moral  Ideal  corresponds,  whether  very  occasionally  or  more 
frequently  and  even  habitually  to  any  of  the  points  of  view 
just  described,  religion  certainly  offers  itself  in  a  most  in- 
viting way.  Let  its  faiths  and  alleged  knowledges  for  the 
present  be  considered  merely  as  practical  postulates.  To 
examine  reflectively  these  postulates,  and  to  criticise  and 
harmonize  these  alleged  knowledges  is  the  task  of  the  phil- 
osophy of  religion ;  and  the  psychology  of  the  religious  being 
and  life  of  man  must  be  invoked  to  consider  in  detail  how  it  is 
that  religion  supports  and  helps  the  moral  life  of  man.  I  can 
only  indicate  a  few  thoughts  upon  the  subject  here. 

Religion  imparts  warmth  and  vitality  to  morality.  Let  it 
be  supposed  that  one  is  trying  to  lead  the  virtuous  life,  with- 
out faith  in  God,  Freedom,  or  Immortality.  We  need  not 
take  the  position  which  Kant  expounded,  and  thus  institute 
the  claim  that  these  tenets  of  religion  are  indubitably  im- 
plicate in  a  moral  law  that  needs  no  appeal  to  human  ex- 
perience, no  other  sponsor  than  the  'pure  practical  reason, 


576  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

in  order  to  authenticate  itself.  We  will  only  ask:  What 
effect  on  such  a  worthy  strife  for  the  Moral  Ideal  is  had  by 
the  absence  of  all  these  faiths  of  religion  ?  The  irrationality 
—  not  to  say,  foolishness  —  of  voluntarily  subjecting  one's 
self  to  a  mere  impersonal  law,  removed  from  all  concrete, 
personal  interests,  has  already  been  sufficiently  exposed.  But 
without  belief  in  the  reality  of  God,  and  in  the  immortal  life 
regarded  as  dependent  upon  man's  voluntary  relations  to 
Him,  certainly  much  of  the  most  important  of  these  personal 
interests  is  removed  from  the  place  of  power.  Devotion  to 
the  practical  concernments  of  a  system  of  physical  and 
psychical  existences  that  can  never  attain  title  to  the 
worthiest  conception  of  personality,  or  of  a  kingdom  of 
personal  ends  and  so  of  the  supremest  dignity  and  worth, 
is  surely  a  difficult  attitude  of  mind  consistently  and  per- 
sistently to  maintain.  Some  few  —  good  few,  if  you  will  — 
are  perhaps  equal  to  the  task.  But  the  multitude  of  men  are 
not  so  strong.  And  there  is  reason  more  than  to  suspect, 
that  it  is  the  only  half-conscious  but  profound  hereditary  and 
environing  influence  of  the  religious  nature,  which  contributes 
no  little  accession  to  the  strength  of  these  "  good  few." 

How  the  baser  fears  of  a  religious  sort  reinforce  the  fear  of 
the  consequences  which  follow  the  disregarding  of  moral  obli- 
gations imposed  by  custom,  or  by  the  statute,  or  even  by  the 
moral  consciousness  of  the  individual,  it  is  scarcely  necessary 
to  show.  A  reverent  attitude  toward  the  Divine  Will  and  an 
awesome  regard  for  the  consequences  of  giving  offence  to 
Deity,  is  closely  akin  to  that  respect  for  the  Moral  Law  in 
which  Kant  thought  to  find  the  only  emotional  factor  in  true 
morality.  The  hopes  of  religion,  —  not  so  much  the  hopes  of 
reward  which  it  holds  out,  but  rather  the  hopes  of  success  in 
making  some  small  contribution  to  the  eternal  blessedness  of 
the  world,  —  reinforce  the  courage  with  which  the  devout 
soul  meets  the  problems  of  the  moral  life.  Thus  one  finds 
the  more  satisfying  practical  solution  of  many  of  these  prob- 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  677 

lems.  We  are  "saved  by  hope,"  both  in  morals  and  in 
religion,  —  while  faith  in  the  effective  goodness  of  God  is  so 
closely  akin  to  the  practical  and  influential  belief  in  the 
supreme  worth  and  final  supremacy  of  moral  interests,  that 
the  two  seem  quite  identical.  Both  require,  at  any  rate,  that 
constancy  of  confidence  in  the  higher  ideals  of  human  reason 
which  is  the  "  sustaining  grace "  of  all  who  cultivate  any 
form  of  that  which  is  conceived  of  as  "  in-itself  Good."  ^ 

Tt  is  everywhere  assumed,  as  a  matter  of  course,  that 
morality  and  religion  are  together,  and  in  their  relations  of 
reciprocity,  subject  to  development.  Savagism  and  brutality, 
where  they  exist,  show  themselves  in  both  the  moral  and  the 
religious  beliefs  and  practices  of  any  social  organization. 
The  characteristic  temperament  of  the  individual,  or  the 
prevalent  temper  and  established  habits  of  any  age,  furnish 
conditions  to  the  manifestation  of  both  forms  of  human  con- 
sciousness. The  culture  of  one  at  the  expense  or  in  neglect 
of  the  other  may  effect  a  temporary  schism  between  the  two. 
Nor  is  it  quite  possible  to  tell  how  moral  any  individual  or 
nation  may  become,  after  the  religious  development  has  been 
allowed  to  lag  far  behind ;  or,  viee  versa,  how  intelligent  and 
sincerely  religious  a  man  or  a  people  may  be,  while  as  yet 
their  ethical  progress  has  not  been  in  any  marked  way  pro- 
moted. The  "conversion"  of  the  Saxons  by  Charlemagne 
was  no  more  and  no  less  bloody  than  his  other  imperial  per- 
formances. And  if  one  Capitulare  (that  of  Paderborn,  785) 
decreed  death  for  him  who  refused  baptism,  or  wantonly  ate 
meat  during  Lent,  or  burned  a  corpse  after  the  custom  of  the 
heathen,  this  was  no  more  immoral  surely  than  the  infliction 
of  the  punishment  of  death  upon  the  man  who,  to  satisfy  the 
Imnger  of  his  children,  knocked  down  a  hare  in  the  forest  of 
some  English  nobleman.     The  latter  immoral  and  legalized 

1  Compare  the  declaration  of  Carus,  Moral  philosophic,  p.  169  :  Vorausgesetzt 
wird  vor  jeder  Religionspflicht,  die  Fflicht  ein  moralisches  Interesse  zu  erregen 
fUr  den  Glauben  an  die  walire  Gottheit  and  das  sterbliche  unendliche  Zlel. 

37 


578  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

cruelty  can  scarcely  be  charged  to  the  influence  of  the  Chris- 
tian religion.  The  horrors  of  the  wars  in  South  Africa 
and  the  Philippine  Islands  are  certainly  not  intensified  by 
the  genuine  Christianity  of  the  nations  that  are  waging 
them. 

To  return,  then,  to  the  fundamental  truths  regarding  the 
relations  of  morality  and  religion,  so  far  as  these  truths  can 
be  based  upon  human  experience  with  both  these  aspects 
of  human  nature  in  its  social  workings.  A  reflective  study 
of  the  phenomena  fails  to  identify  the  two.  Religion  is  not 
the  sole  ground,  nor  does  it  afford  the  only  sanctions,  of 
morality ;  nor  does  religion  wholly  correspond  to  morality  in 
respect  to  the  ideal  which  it  presents.  But  the  roots  of  the 
two  are  largely  the  same,  —  both  those  that  strike  down  into 
the  unchangeable  constitution  of  man,  and  those  that  spread 
widely  in  the  underlying  strata  of  ail  human  domestic  and 
other  social  conditions.  Both  the  similarities  and  the  differ- 
ences are  rather  too  manifold  and  subtle  to  admit  of  offhand 
analysis  or  easy-going  enumeration.  The  faiths,  fears,  hopes, 
sanctions,  and  ideals  of  the  two  merge  into  each  other,  and 
interpenetrate  in  myriads  of  ways.  It  is  the  many-sided 
nature  of  the  one  moral  and  religious  Self  which  is  expressing 
itself  in  both  ways,  —  inseparably  allied,  never  to  be  divorced, 
but  always  to  be  accorded  those  items  of  special  worth  which 
belong  to  each,  and  never  in  a  crude  and  incautious  manner 
to  be  confused  or  identified. 

Morality  and  religion  need  each  other  in  order  to  secure 
the  perfect  and  more  blessed  and  worthy  ideals  of  life ;  or, 
rather,  in  order  to  live  up  toward  our  growing  and  rising 
conceptions  of  this  blessed  and  worthy  life.  If,  on  the  one 
hand,  morality  needs  religion  in  order  to  impart  to  it  warmth, 
comfort,  and  the  assurance  of  faith  —  needs,  in  a  word,  the 
divine  Life  and  the  divine  Grace  —  none  the  less  does  religion 
customarily  show  itself  inferior  to  morality  in  clearness  of 
vision,  in  rational  character,  and  in  practical  adaptability  to 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  679 

the  exigencies  of  the  present  life.  As  says  Dr.  Laurie  :^  "  A 
system  of  moral  ends  has  an  opportunity  of  correcting  itself 
from  day  to  day  by  the  perceived  results  of  human  activity, 
while  in  the  region  of  pure  idea,  which  may  always  be  dis- 
connected from  the  actualities  of  life,  there  is  no  such  con- 
tinual corrective  of  the  false  and  the  inadequate."  I  cannot, 
indeed,  agree  with  the  proposition  that  the  "  region  of  pure 
idea "  may  "  always  be  disconnected  from  the  actualities  of 
life  " ;  nor  is  the  phrase  an  adequate  description  either  of  the 
domain  of  speculative  thinking  upon  the  great  philosophical 
problems  of  religion,  or  of  the  practical  and  emotional  expe- 
riences which  enter  into  the  religious  life.  But  man  un- 
doubtedly has  more  of  solid  and  indubitable  experiences 
connecied  with  the  sources,  the  sanctions,  the  principles,  the 
development,  and  the  consequences  of  conduct,  when  con- 
sidered from  the  ethical  point  of  view,  than  with  the  corre- 
sponding problems  in  the  domain  of  religion.  There  is  more 
of  racial  solidarity,  of  historical  verity,  of  experimental  truth, 
and  immediate  practical  import,  in  morality  than  in  religion. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  enter  into  the  reasons  for  this  prac- 
tical superiority  of  the  ethical  over  the  religious  sanctions 
and  principles.  Man  feels,  indeed,  the  obligation  to  conduct 
himself  aright  in  all  his  many  and  varied  relations  to  his  total 
environment.  So  far  as  the  proper  adjustment  depends  upon 
his  own  conduct,  the  obligation  is  ethical ;  the  adjustment  is 
a  moral  problem ;  the  processes  and  results  belong  to  the 
sphere  of  ethics.  If  divine  beings,  in  any  of  the  many  forms 
simulated  or  faithfully  represented  by  human  conceptions, 
really  exist,  then  the  adjustment  of  human  relations  to  them, 
and  of  the  relations  of  men  to  one  another  and  to  their  physi- 
cal environment,  as  coming  under  these  divine  beings,  is  a 
matter  of  ethical  concernment.  The  postulates  of  religion 
place  the  conduct  of  men  toward  the  Divine  within  the 
domain  of  moral  sanctions  and  moral  principles.     But  in- 

1  Ethica,  p.  189. 


580  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

asmuch  as  these  postulates  do  not  in  most  cases  attain  the 
same  position  of  clear  light  and  intelligent  comprehension 
which  belongs  to  the  faiths,  knowledges,  and  practices,  of  mor- 
ality, religion  remains  inferior  to,  or  rather  dependent  upon, 
morality  in  certain  important  respects.  In  certain  others,  as 
I  have  already  shown,  the  relation  is  reversed :  morality  de- 
pends upon  the  acceptance  of  the  religious  postulates;  and 
religion  becomes  the  most  desirable  and  helpful  companion, 
and  even  supporter  and  inspirer  of  the  virtuous  life. 

In  this  connection  mention  should  be  made  of  that  one 
great  and  perpetually  recurring  danger  which  arises  out  of 
the  inherent  natural  and  historical  connection  of  morality 
with  religion.  I  refer  to  the  dangerous  heresy  of  a  double 
morality.  Such  a  two-sided  ethical  system  only  makes  con- 
fusion worse  confounded  ;  it  debases  religion  and  loads  down 
morals  with  an  added  weight  of  practical  and  theoretical 
contradictions.  Nevertheless,  this  doctrine  of  a  double  moral- 
ity has  been  somewhat  variously  held.  Sometimes  it  amounts 
to  having  one  code  for  duties  connected  with  religious  faith 
and  worship,  and  another  for  those  forms  of  conduct  which 
it  is  convenient  to  regard  as  not  belonging  to  the  religious 
life.  At  other  times,  the  distinction  is  made  between  essenti- 
ally different  principles  and  sanctions  of  conduct,  —  some 
having  reference  only  to  the  members  of  your  own  religious 
caste  or  sect,  others  which  are  to  be  brought  into  play  w^hen 
dealing  with  the  adherents  of  other  religions.  Or,  yet  again, 
within  the  sphere  of  the  religious  life  itself,  the  distinction  is 
set  up  between  a  higher  and  a  lower  morality.  The  low^er  is, 
perhaps,  the  morality  of  the  laity,  the  higher  that  of  the 
clergy  ;  or  the  lower  is  the  morality  of  duty  merely,  and  the 
higher  that  to  which  the  merit  of  some  special  divine  favor  is 
attached.  In  this  way  piety  and  morality,  instead  of  being 
drawn  together  and  made  to  impart  each  to  the  other  its 
peculiar  strength,  are  further  separated.  The  two  ideals  are 
rendered  antagonistic  rather  than  complementary  and  recipro- 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  681 

cally  assisting.  Thus  the  great  Church  Father,  Thomas  Aqui- 
nas, in  his  effort  to  combine  ''  ecclesiastical  supernaturalism  " 
with  the  ethical  views  of  Plato  and  Aristotle,  made  a  sharp  divis- 
ion between  the  cardinal  virtues  of  the  Greek  ethics  —  wisdom, 
justice,  self-control,  and  courage  —  and  the  three  supernatural 
virtues  of  faith,  love,  and  hope.  It  is  easy  to  see  how  this 
division  may  be  used  to  withdraw  from  the  virtue  of  wisdom 
the  support  of  faith  in  the  Divine  goodness,  to  take  away 
from  justice  the  warning  and  vivifying  influence  of  the  Divine 
love,  and  to  withold  from  self-control  and  courage  the  support, 
which  they  so  sorely  need,  of  a  cheering  religious  hope.  But 
religious  faith  should  inspire  wisdom ;  love  should  infuse 
justice ;  and  hope  should  sustain  courage. 

Here  again,  however,  it  is  not  religion  and  morality  which 
contain  in  their  own  nature,  or  by  virtue  of  their  more 
legitimate  influences  are  responsible  for,  so  sad  a  mistake  in 
ethics,  so  dangerous  a  doctrine  in  religion.  To-day,  under  the 
baleful  domination  of  commercial  greed,  and  notwithstanding 
the  plainest  teachings  of  the  world's  most  highly  developed 
moral  principles  and  the  most  potent  exhortations  and 
motives  of  the  Christian  religion,  this  detestable  heresy,  this 
most  perilous  enemy  both  of  pure  morals  and  of  sincere 
religion  holds  sway  over  the  multitude  of  minds.  In  national 
and  international  politics,  the  current  morality  is  double. 
The  combined  forces  of  morality  and  religion  must  be  invoked 
to  grind  into  powder  this  brazen  and  hideous  two-faced  idol 
of  the  age.  To  shape  the  material  into  the  image  of  the  new 
man,  whose  moral  consciousness  suffuses  and  illumines  his  re- 
ligious faiths  and  religious  cult,  and  whose  religious  conscious- 
ness warms,  consoles,  and  supports  in  the  struggle  with  evil 
his  moral  conduct,  both  sets  of  influences  must  work  harmoni- 
ously. But  there  is  much  truth  in  Martensen's  statement  i  that 
"  abstract  autonomic  morality  only  appears  at  those  seasons 
when  there  is  also  religious  decay."     It  is  when  both  morals 

1  Christian  Ethics,  p.  17. 


582  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

and  religion  are  decaying  that  the  practice  of  a  double  moral- 
ity is  likeliest  to  be  rife.  Its  prevalence  at  present  is  one  of 
the  most  foreboding  signs  of  the  times. 

We  are  now  in  a  position  to  see  more  clearly  what  is  the 
bearing  of  this  profound  and  many-sided  connection  between 
morality  and  religion  upon  the  ultimate  problems  of  ethics. 
In  attempting  to  pursue  these  problems,  our  way  was  blocked 
by  certain  antinomies,  or  puzzles  which  seemed  to  baffle  all 
attempts  satisfactorily  to  solve  them  by  employing  only  the 
material  which  empirical  and  historical  ethics  could  furnish. 
The  theoretical  handling  of  this  material  had  forced  an 
inquiry  into  the  nature,  origin,  sanctions,  and  development, 
of  a  rational  Ideal ;  and  the  very  constitution  of  this  Ideal,  so 
to  speak,  had  come  to  appear  of  a  superhuman,  not  to  say 
supernatural,  character.  Moreover,  the  moral  Ideal  appeared 
to  make  demands  upon  the  life  of  conduct  which  were  difficult 
to  reconcile  either  theoretically  or  practically  with  the  inter- 
ests of  other  sides  of  human  nature  and  other  forces  in  the 
historical  evolution  of  human  society.  Hence,  finally,  arose 
those  theoretical  and  practical  antinomies,  which  it  was  found 
impossible  to  solve  either  by  substituting  some  other  ideal 
for  the  moral  ideal,  or  by  debasing  the  character  of  the  ideal 
itself.  The  extent  of  these  problems  was  seen  to  be  co- 
incident with  the  entire  sphere  of  human  conduct,  and  of  the 
development  of  the  race  as  dependent  upon  its  own  conduct. 
Such  sciences  as  economics,  politics,  and  sociology,  which 
deal  with  men  as  associated  and  interacting,  upon  a  basis  of 
their  total  physical  environment  in  a  great  variety  of  ways, 
are  all  ethical.  But  the  solutions  which  they  offer  only 
emphasize  anew  and  extend  still  further  these  distinctively 
ethical  problems,  these  antinomies  of  the  practical  reason  as 
the  responsible  ruler  of  the  life  of  man. 

We  are  now  also  in  a  position  to  affirm  that  religion  does 
offer  much  needed  assistance  toward  resolving  the  antinomies 
of  ethics ;  that  it  does  throw  light  upon  the  puzzling  problems 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  683 

with  which  the  student  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct  finds 
himself  confronted  after  he  has  used  up  all  his  empirical 
data,  and  has  lent  his  ear  to  all  the  different  theories  re- 
garding the  nature,  sanctions,  principles,  and  development, 
of  what  men  call  "  the  Right "  in  conduct  and  in  character. 
The  help  from  religion  to  morality  is  real  though  not  com- 
plete ;  it  should  be  respectfully  considered  and  gratefully 
received,  even  if  it  is  only  partial.  I  will,  then,  put  my  con- 
tention into  the  following  form :  If  those  postulates  of 
religion  which  the  constitution  and  history  of  man  seem  to 
warrant  him  in  accepting  be  made  the  faith  of  the  scml  and 
the  guide  of  the  practical  life,  many  of  the  practical  anti- 
nomies of  ethics  are  either  completely  solved,  or  much  re- 
lieved. These  postulates  themselves  may  be  so  stated  as  to 
appeal  to  a  vast  amount  of  experience  which  evinces  the  close 
and  indissoluble  connection,  but  not  identity,  of  morality  and 
religion  as  they  grow  out  of  the  personal  life  of  humanity 
and  develop  in  their  historical  interrelations  according  to  the 
nature  and  goal  of  this  life. 

In  order  that  the  truth  I  am  presenting  may  appear  in 
more  convincing  form,  let  us  take  for  a  moment  both  morality 
and  religion  at  their  best.  On  the  one  hand,  the  best  morality 
approves  such  a  view  of  life  as  regards  the  moral  ideal  to 
be  above  all  other  ends  of  conduct  most  inspiring  and  most 
worthy  to  enlist  the  efforts  of  the  rational  mind.  But  this 
ideal  is  personal ;  it  is  rich  in  all  the  concrete  virtues  which 
the  Moral  Self  feels  obligated  to  endeavor  to  realize.  The 
virtues  of  self-control  are  necessary  factors  in  this  ideal ;  but 
they  do  not  enable  the  good  man  to  dispense  with  the  virtues 
of  judgment.  And  strong  and  constant  self-control,  even 
when  well  coupled  with  wisdom,  prudence,  and  truthfulness, 
cannot  boast  itself  to  be  quite  independent  of  sympathy,  kind- 
ness, and  benevolence.  Nor  is  this  ideal  stationary  ;  and  so 
capable  of  being  approached  without  itself  undergoing  any 
improvement.     Were  it  not  the  subject  of  development  its 


684  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

own  imperfections  would  soon  become  too  manifest  to  admit 
of  its  being  longer  regarded  as  a  worthy  ideal.  Nor  does  the 
ideal  encourage  an  exclusive  devotion  to  one's  Self  —  not 
even  to  one's  own  better  and  ideal  Self,  as  though  this  could 
possibly  be  realized  in  independence  of  devotion  to  the  in- 
terests of  the  social  organization.  On  the  contrary,  the 
moral  ideal  is  so  distinctively  social  that  one  cannot  even 
begin  to  consider  the  existence,  or  much  less  the  hopeful 
development,  of  the  individual  moral  Self  as  possible  apart 
from  other  selves  w^ho  constitute  with  it  a  moral  association, 
a  kin^om  of  persons  in  which  personal  interests  and  per- 
sonal ends  are  regarded  as  the  only  realities  of  supremest 
worth.  This  tenet  is  true,  although  the  most  difficult  prac- 
tical problems  of  ethics  often  arise  in  the  attempt  to  know 
just  how  to  adjust  the  higher  interests  of  the  individual  Self 
with  the  higher  interests  of  the  social  organization.  But, 
then,  here  is  one  of  the  practical  antinomies  which  religion 
may  help  us  to  relieve  or  even  to  solve. 

What,  on  the  other  hand,  may  the  best  religion  be  said  to 
maintain  ?  In  answering  this  question  it  is  not  proposed  to 
make  any  selection  among  the  different  religions  which  con- 
test with  one  another  the  claim  to  occupy  the  first  rank  in 
the  respectful  consideration  of  mankind.  Nor  is  it  proposed 
to  try  to  enumerate  those  tenets  of  religious  faith  in  which 
the  best  religions  may  be  supposed  substantially  to  agree.  I 
wish  now  only  to  state  briefly  what  are  the  propositions,  as 
regarded  from  the  ethical  point  of  view,  which  appear  to 
represent  what  is  highest  and  best  in  the  religious  faith  of 
mankind.  The  best  religion  as  related  to  ethics  is,  then,  the 
faith  in  an  Ideal  Personality,  whose  real  Being  affords  the 
source,  the  sanctions,  and  the  guaranty  of  the  best  morality  ; 
and  to  whom  reverential  and  loving  loyalty  may  be  the 
supreme  principle  for  the  conduct  of  life.  This  ethically  best 
of  the  religious  tenets  lies  slumbering  in  the  exhortations 
which  so  many  religions  make  that  their  followers  should 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  585 

purify  their  hearts  and  lives,  if  they  wish  acceptably  to  ap- 
proach the  Divine  presence  and  find  favor  in  the  Divine  sight. 
This  it  is  which  is  symbolized  in  the  mirror  of  Shinto,  and 
more  clearly  expressed  in  those  doctrines  of  Hinduism  to 
which  reference  has  already  been  made.  This  is  the  sub- 
stance regarding  the  gods,  and  the  relations  of  men  to  them, 
of  that  which  is  taught  by  much  of  the  Egyptian  Book  of  the 
Dead.  This  it  is  which  the  religious  experience  of  that 
people  who  had  a  special  genius  for  religion  embodied  in  the 
conception  of  Yahveh  as  the  God  of  righteousness.  But  pre- 
eminently is  this  the  central  ethico-religious  tenet  of  Chris- 
tianity ;  the  way  of  right  conduct  is  the  way  of  salvation ;  it 
is  the  way  of  man's  being  perfect  after  the  pattern  of  his 
Father  in  Heaven ;  it  is  the  "  imitation  of  Christ." 

And  now,  bringing  together  these  two  clusters  of  best 
conceptions,  —  one  from  morality  and  the  other  from  religion, 
—  we  may  see  how  they  unite  to  furnish  the  most  illumi- 
nating, and  as  well  the  most  inspiring,  comforting,  and 
hopeful  attitude  toward  the  problems  of  morality  and  the 
conduct  of  the  practical  life.  In  other  terms,  the  postulates 
of  the  best  religion,  when  they  are  joined  to  the  choicest 
conceptions  and  principles  of  the  highest  moral  development, 
solve  in  a  way  the  practical  antinomies  which  non-veligious 
ethics  leaves  in  the  dark.  From  these  two  higher  points  of 
view,  —  the  ethical  and  the  religious,  —  or  rather  from  the 
one  ethico-religious  ground  of  standing  which  covers  and 
occupies  them  both,  the  so-called  moral  laws  coincide  in  their 
principles  and  in  their  sanctions  with  the  religious  commands. 
All  duties  become  for  the  true  believer  due  to  God  as  the 
ideally  perfect  Person,  and  to  men  as  his  children,  as  "  Sons 
of  God."  All  virtues  become,  essentially  considered,  right 
attitudes  toward  the  King  whose  kingdom  includes  as  its 
members  all  sentient,  and  especially  all  rational  and  personal 
life.  All  doing  right  becomes  interpretable  as  loyalty  to  the 
will  of  God,  as  keeping  the  Divine  Law,  or  as  being  a  true 


586  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

son  of  God.  This  is  the  exaltation  in  its  ethical  aspect  of  the 
words  ascribed  to  Hippocrates  who  coupled  with  the  inclusive 
"  all  "  the  adjectives  "  divine  "  and  "  human  "  as  well  {irdvra 
Beta  KoX  avOpcdiriva  Trdvra).  Thus  man's  faith  toward  the  Moral 
Ideal  falls  into  line  with  his  Way  of  Salvation ;  the  antithesis 
between  the  Moral  Self,  with  its  law  and  ideal  of  life,  and  the 
sentient  Self,  with  its  strong  craving  for  satisfaction  of  desire 
and  personal  happiness,  is  softened ;  and  finally,  it  is  made  to 
vanish  wholly  away.  The  hard  setting  together  of  the  teeth 
and  tense  straining  of  the  muscles  in  the  effort  to  run  well 
the  race  of  duty  in  the  sight  of  an  impersonal  and  forever 
unattainable  ideal  gives  place  to  a  no  less  strenuous,  but 
more  hopeful  and  joyful  service,  because  it  is  a  loyal  devo- 
tion to  a  personal  master  and  friend.  The  social  instincts 
and  other  more  crude  and  non-rational  motifs  which  evoke  a 
regard  for  the  interests  of  others  are  found  to  be  only  antici- 
pations of  that  rational  recognition  of  kinship  which  entitles 
every  member  of  the  race  to  a  share  in  the  blessings  of  a 
social  ideal,  of  a  true  Kingdom  of  God. 

This  is  the  truth  in  its  sublimated  form  which  Plato  teaches 
by  way  of  exhortation  at  the  close  of  his  most  masterly  Dia- 
logue—"The  Republic"; 

"  Wherefore  my  counsel  is,  that  we  hold  fast  to  the  heavenly 
way  and  follow  after  justice  and  virtue  always,  considering 
that  the  soul  is  immortal  and  able  to  endure  every  sort  of 
good  and  every  sort  of  evil.  Thus  shall  we  live  dear  to  one 
another  and  to  the  gods,  both  while  remaining  here  and  when, 
like  conquerors  in  the  games  who  go  round  to  gather  gifts, 
we  receive  our  reward.  And  it  shall  be  well  with  us  both  in 
this  life  and  in  the  pilgrimage  of  a  thousand  years  which  we 
have  been  reciting." 

In  the  previous  discussion  the  faiths  and  practices  of 
religion  have  been  regarded  simply  as  postulates  which  have 
an  undoubtedly  important  effect  in  modifying  the  practical 
antinomies  of  ethics.     These  postulates  have  been  for  tlie 


MORALITY  AND  RELIGION  587 

most  part  accepted  as  they  are  to  be  discovered  in  operation 
among  men,  and  exerting  their  matter-of-fact  influence  over 
human  conduct  and  over  human  opinions  respecting  the 
right  and  wrong  of  conduct.  It  remains  necessary  for  the 
completion  of  our  attempt  to  throw  light  upon  the  ultimate 
problems  of  ethics  that  we  should  inquire  into  that  course  of 
reflective  thinking  by  which  these  postulates  are  best  justified. 
And  this  I  shall  do  under  two  heads,  —  namely,  first,  the 
identification  of  the  ground  of  morality  with  the  World- 
Ground,  or  the  doctrine  of  God  as  the  Source  of  the  moral 
law,  its  sanctions  and  its  development ;  and,  second,  the 
justification  of  the  hope  that  the  ultimate  moral  ideal  will 
be  realized  in  the  establishment  of  the  Divine  Kingdom. 


CHAPTER  XXV 

THE  GROUND  OF  MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND 

A  CERTAIN  natural  and  naive,  but  strong  and  indissoluble 
bond  between  morality  and  religion  has  been  seen  to  be  the 
explanation  of  much  of  the  ethical  history  of  humanity. 
Although  morality  and  religion  are  not  throughout  identical, 
but,  the  rather,  express  and  emphasize  different  complex 
aspects  of  human  nature  and  of  the  development  of  man, 
they  constantly  draw  upon  the  same  sources  and  reveal  simi- 
lar ideal  conceptions  and  ideal  aims.  But  more  especially  is 
it  true  that  religion  furnishes  to  morality  the  much  needed, 
and  even  indispensable,  support  of  its  faiths  and  its  motives, 
—  indeed,  of  its  entire  affective  and  practical  attitude  toward 
reality  and  toward  the  conditions  and  ends  of  life.  And, 
finally,  if  one  will  but  accept  the  postulates  of  religion,  and 
shape  his  conduct  in  accordance  with  them,  some  of  the  most 
trying  of  the  antithetic  and  seemingly  contradictory  positions 
in  which  the  empirical  and  historical  study  of  ethics  leaves 
the  mind  are  either  greatly  relieved  or  wholly  transcended. 
The  soul,  aspiring  after  the  ideal  of  a  virtuous  life,  and  finding 
the  way  so  difficult  and  the  goal  set  by  the  ideal  so  unattain- 
able under  existing  circumstances,  is  quieted  and  encouraged, 
incited  and  cheered,  by  the  faiths  and  hopes  of  religion. 
Indeed,  in  its  most  approved  form,  the  belief  in  God  and 
the  service  of  God  become  the  fundamental  and  controlling 
principles  of  the  life  of  conduct  and  of  the  development  of 
character. 

In  the  historical  evolution  of  liumanity  —  both  ethically 
and  religiously  —  this  natural  and  na'ive  connection  between 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  589 

morals  and  religion  must  give  way  to  a  more  sure  and  broad 
comprehension  of  the  common  basis  upon  which  both  repose. 
But  such  a  comprehension  can  be  obtained  only  through  philo- 
sophical reflection.  Here,  as  everywhere,  philosophy  seeks  to 
discover,  to  criticise,  and  to  harmonize  those  universals  which 
have  their  existence  for  experience  in  all  the  phenomena  of 
man's  life.  These  "  universals  "  in  ethics  which  have  already 
been  discovered  and  discussed,  —  chiefly  from  the  psychologi- 
cal and  historical  points  of  view,  —  have  proved,  in  general, 
to  be  of  two  orders :  (1)  certain  functions  of  human  nature 
and  their  products,  —  the  various  kinds  of  right  and  wrong 
conduct  and  of  opinions  about  conduct,  —  which  belong  to  all 
men,  in  whatever  stage  of  moral  evolution  you  may  find  them  ; 
and  (2)  certain  ideals  which,  although  variously  conceived  in 
respect  of  their  details  and  always  conceived  imperfectly,  are 
shared  in  by  all  men,  and  which  influence  most  powerfully 
the  entire  development  of  humanity  so  far  as  this  development 
is  dependent,  either  directly  or  indirectly,  upon  the  results  of 
human  conduct.  These  two  orders  of  so-called  "  universals  " 
are  not,  however,  spoken  of  as  tivo^  in  the  meaning  of  being 
divided  or  separated  by  exclusion  of  either  class  from  the 
other.  The  moral  ideals  have  themselves  been  shown  to  be 
the  functions  of  man's  idealizing  mind,  and  thus  dependent 
in  their  own  development  upon  the  historical  changes  which 
have  gone  on  in  the  actual  nature  of  his  conduct  and  of  his 
judgment  concerning  the  right  and  wrong  of  conduct.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  it  has  also  been  shown  that  the  actual 
practices  of  men  and  the  prevalent  opinions  as  to  the  nature 
of  the  moral  life,  are  themselves  dependently  connected  with 
these  ideals.  In  other  words,  man  creates  the  norm — the 
universal  and  necessary  ideas,  the  so-called  "  moral  law,"  or 
"categorical  imperative"  —  which  itself,  in  turn,  forms  his 
actual  life  of  conduct  and  gives  shape  to  his  entire  moral  and 
social  evolution. 

The   ultimate   philosophical   problem    in   ethics   becomes, 


590  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

then,  the  inquiry,  by  critical  reflection,  into  the  real  ground 
for  the  existence  and  development  of  human  moral  life ;  and 
for  the  progressive  realization  of  the  moral  ideals  of  humanity. 
How  does  the  ground  of  morality  stand  related  to  the  Being 
of  that  which  philosophy  knows  as  the  "  World-Ground  "  ? 
Or  to  put  the  question  more  concretely  and  definitely  in  the 
terms  of  religion  :  Can  the  mind  frame  a  rational  system 
of  ethics  without  admitting  (either  as  tenet  of  faith,  or  as 
postulate,  or  as  reasoned  knowledge)  the  Divine  Being,  so 
conceived  of  as  to  be  the  Source,  the  final  Sanctioner,  and 
the  Guarantor  of  morality  among  men  ?  I  believe  that  this 
last  question  must  most  emphatically  be  answered,  No.  Or,  to 
turn  the  answer  into  an  affirmative  proposition  :  The  Ground 
of  Morality  for  man  must  be  found  in  the  World-Ground 
conceived  of  as  an  ethical  personality,  as  the  ideally  righteous 
and  holy  God.  Thus,  and  thus  only,  can  that  which  the 
multitude  of  the  race  have  always  done  naturally  and  naively 
—  namely,  establish  a  more  or  less  vital  connection  between 
their  moral  conceptions  and  practices  regarded  from  the 
ethical  point  of  view,  and  the  faiths,  feelings,  and  practices 
which  constitute  their  religion  —  be  made  consonant  with 
the  conclusions  of  tlie  philosophic  mind.  Thus,  and  thus 
only,  can  the  total  interests  of  humanity,  as  they  are  repre- 
sented by  loth  morality  and  religion,  be  merged  in  one  view 
of  the  world  and  of  human  experience  which,  although  it 
may  be  far  enough  from  solving  all  the  vexed  problems  set 
for  reason  to  solve,  certainly  affords  the  highest  attainable 
satisfaction  for  the  rational  as  well  as  the  practical  life  of 
mankind. 

In  this  case,  as  elsewhere,  philosophical  reflection  elaborates 
into  metaphysical  conceptions,  and  defends,  those  instinctive 
or  unreasoned  beliefs  and  practical  postulates  upon  which 
the  life  of  humanity  bases  its  development  and  even  its  very 
existence.  In  truth,  the  ultimate  questions  of  moral  philoso- 
phy are  not  problems  for  ethics  alone  to  solve.     They  acquire 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  691 

the  nature  of  imperative  demands  upon  ethics  to  take  into 
its  confidence  the  conclusions  of  the  philosophy  of  nature 
and  the  philosophy  of  mind;  but  most  especially  do  they 
constitute  an  imperative  demand  upon  the  student  of  the 
philosophy  of  man's  religious  life.  These  ethical  problems 
start  the  discussion  of  certain  yet  more  fundamental  and 
universal  conceptions  and  relations  ;  thus  the  reflective  and 
critical  treatment  of  ethical  phenomena  connects  the  meta- 
physics of  ethics  with  the  entire  domain  of  metaphysical  phil- 
osophy. As  was  said  at  the  beginning  (p.  29  f.),  and  as  has 
been  implied  all  the  way  through,  ethics  cannot  dispense  with 
metaphysics.  On  the  contrary,  its  metaphysics  comprises 
all  metaphysics  ;  because  ethics  itself  is  concerned  with  all 
the  most  essential  interests,  and  deals  with  all  the  conscious 
life,  of  man  considered  as  a  true  person,  a  moral  Self. 

It  will  be  noticed,  however,  that  this  conception  of  the 
true  place  and  province  of  the  metaphysics  of  ethics,  and  of 
the  proper  and  only  successful  method  of  its  pursuit,  is  quite 
different  from  that  of  the  immortal  author  of  the  "  Funda- 
mental Principles  of  the  Metaphysic  of  Morals."  Kant 
assumed  the  existence  in  human  reason  of  a  universally 
valid  and  necessary  principle  (a  practical  synthetic  judgment 
a  priori)  which  was  virtually  admitted  by  every  reason,  and 
which  by  philosophical  criticism  could  be  explicated,  and  held 
up  for  the  most  unquestioning  acceptance  and  transcendent 
respect.  We  have  followed  the  lowlier  and  more  humble, 
but,  as  I  firmly  believe,  much  surer  and  safer  path  of 
psychological  and  historical  inquiry  into  man's  actual  ex- 
perience with  himself  as  a  moral  being,  in  social  relations, 
pursuing  and  owning  allegiance  to  a  moral  ideal.  This 
empirical  path,  however,  conducts  us  irresistibly  to  the 
presence  of  the  ultimate  metaphysical  problems.  What  sort 
of  a  World  is  that  in  which  a  race  of  beings,  constituted  moral 
selves  and  following  moral  ideals,  can  originate,  struggle, 
organize  themselves  socially,  and  develop  institutions  founded 


592  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

wholly  or  in  part  on  ethical  principles  ?  It  is  God's  World, 
In  what  sort  of  a  Being  must  we  conclude  that  such  a  world, 
and  such  a  race  existing  in  such  a  world,  and  having  to  run 
such  a  course  of  development,  has  its  real  explanation,  its 
Ground,  if  our  explanation  is  to  maintain  any  claim  to  a 
consistent  rationality  ?  It  is  the  Being  of  the  ideally  righteous 
and  holy  One^  whom  the  highest  religious  consciousness  believes 
in  and  worships  as  God. 

In  support  of  such  a  metaphysics  of  ethics  as  is  outlined 
in  the  declarations  just  made,  the  temptation  is  strong  to 
maintain  a  polemical,  if  not  a  purely  dogmatic  attitude 
toward  those  who  dispute  or  even  doubt.  I  believe  that 
the  statement  made,  for  example,  by  Professor  Watson^  — 
"  To  a  man  in  our  day  who  thinks,  and  who  insists  upon 
having  a  connected  view  of  things,  it  is  apparent  that  in- 
dividual, political,  and  social  morality,  are  one  and  insepar- 
able, and  that  law  and  morality  as  a  whole  ultimately  rest 
upon  and  are  explained  by  religion  "  —  is  substantially  true. 
But  merely  to  affirm  this,  or  even  to  prove  the  affirmation 
by  an  appeal  to  current  thoughtful  opinion,  is  not  enough  to 
satisfy  the  legitimate  demands  of  a  mind  which  seeks  to  find 
a  firm  rational  basis  for  a  system  of  etiiical  principles.  Such 
a  basis,  as  has  already  been  said,  must  seek  in  its  formation 
all  the  help  that  can  be  rendered  by  general  metaphysical 
philosophy,  and  especially  by  the  philosophy  of  religion. 
Ethics  can  ill  afford  to  dispense  with  any  of  these  offers  of 
help.  Neither  the  high-and-dry,  autocratic,  a  priori  method 
of  Kant,  nor  the  hortatory  and  sentimental  method  of  the 
current  theology,  are  satisfactory  to  meet  the  demands  of 
reflective  thinking  upon  the  ultimate  problems  of  conduct. 

The  profoundest  and  ripest  conclusions  of  philosophy,  when 

firmly  founded  upon  the  survey  of  the  experience  of  humanity, 

belong  to  that  branch  of  metaphysics  which  deals  with  the 

grounds  in  reality  of  man's  moral  life  and  moral  development. 

1  Hedonistic  Theories,  p.  12. 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  693 

Philosophy  can  render  no  greater  service  than  this  to  human- 
ity. Even  if  it  can  only  make  somewhat  more  acceptable 
to  reason  that  metaphysical  tenet  which  finds  the  Ground 
of  Morality  in  the  ethical  Being  of  the  World-Ground,  this  is 
no  small  gain.  Anything  in  the  way  of  sound  reflective 
thinking  which  seems  to  harmonize  the  discordant  claims 
of  the  sensitive  and  sensuous  nature  of  man,  with  the  claims 
of  moral  consciousness  and  its  ideals  of  duty  and  estimate  of 
judgments  of  worth,  is  itself  beyond  all  price  as  measured 
by  physical  good.  Indeed,  when  considered  from  the  point 
of  view  where  the  values  of  different  truths  are  sufficiently 
taken  into  the  account,  such  practical,  reconciling,  and  in- 
vigorating work  of  philosophy  is  that  in  which  the  attempt 
at  a  systematic  and  rational  treatment  of  all  our  ultimate 
problems  most  properly  culminates. 

The  attempt  at  a  justification  of  the  theory  which  identifies 
the  Ground  of  Morality  with  the  World-Ground,  by  conceiv- 
ing of  this  World-Ground  as  the  ideally  righteous  and  holy 
personal  God,  must  borrow  much  from  general  philosophy 
and  anticipate  no  little  from  the  philosophy  of  religion 
so  called.  In  the  form  in  which  I  shall  now  present  it,  the 
argument  is  an  extension  of  the  "  theory  of  reality  "  which  I 
have  elsewhere^  discussed  in  detail;  and  it  rests  upon  a 
view  of  the  nature,  validity,  and  limits  of  human  knowledge, 
and  of  the  essential  reality  of  mind,  which  I  have  also 
advocated  in  separate  writings.^  From  these  three  related 
branches  of  philosophy  I  therefore  gather  together  the 
substance  of  the  conclusions  which  their  independent  study 
seemed  to  justify. 

And,  first,  man  knows  Reality  and  knows  something  which 
is  beyond  all  doubt  and  all  dispute  as  to  what  tliis  Reality  is. 
It  is  not  true  that  knowledge  is  "  of  phenomena "  only ;  or 
that  all  the  assumptions  and  implicates  of  that  form  of  the 

1  In  a  work  called  A  Theory  of  Reality,  published  in  1899. 

2  Philosophy  of  Knowledge,  1897,  and  Philosophy  of  Mind,  1893. 


694  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

mind's  functioning  which  we  dignify  with  cognitive  titles  is 
forever  open  to  scepticism,  —  much  less  to  either  dogmatic  or 
critical  agnosticism.  On  the  contrary,  reality  is  implicate  in 
all  knowledge ;  and  in  every  exercise  of  the  knowing  faculty  the 
testimony  plainly  is  —  I,  the  actual,  am  not  afar  off,  but  nigh 
thee,  even  within,  an  integral  part  of  thy  Self,  the  knower. 
The  doubt  of  this  truth  —  the  truth  of  all  truths  — is  so  irra- 
tional, so  absurd,  that  it  does  not  even  admit  of  a  consistent 
and  intelligible  statement  by  one  mind  to  another,  or  by  any 
one  to  one's  own  conscious  mind.  This  attitude  toward 
reality  in  which  knowledge  consists  —  call  it  what  you  will, 
envisagement,  intuition,  belief,  inference,  or  what  not,  or 
better  all  combined  —  does  not  come  by  one  sudden  leap  into 
conscious  life ;  nor  is  it  the  result  of  the  functioning  of  some 
one  selected  class  of  the  so-called  faculties  of  the  human 
mind.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  the  choicest  development  of  the 
complex  Self  functioning  in  all  its  three,  not  identical  nor 
yet  distinct  and  separable  forms  of  functioning  —  namely, 
intellection,  feeling,  will.  In  this,  its  complex  and  developed 
active  and  passive  life  of  relation  to  other  selves  and  self-like 
things,  which  we  denominate  its  growing  knowledge,  the 
mind  constantly  exists  in  a  living  and  fruitful  intercourse 
with  reality.  Thus  the  artificial  analysis  of  the  Kantian 
criticism,  with  its  hard  and  fast  gulf  between  the  bounds  of 
pure  reason  and  the  domain  of  reality,  with  its  firm  and  divi- 
sive separation  between  phenomenon  and  noumenon, —  as 
though  actuality  were  forever  outside  of  the  mind's  life  and 
could  never  show  itself  in  consciousness  otherwise  than  as 
the  shadowy  suggestion  of  a  great  unknown  That-something- 
really-is  —  totally  misrepresents  the  indubitably  experienced 
truth  of  the  case.  On  the  one  hand,  the  philosophy  of  knowl- 
edge teaches  as  that  "  Thing-in-itself  "  there  is  not  —  to  be 
either  known,  or  imagined,  or  thought ;  but,  on  the  other  hand, 
it  teaches  also  that  the  really-existent  is  implicate  in  all  human 
knowledge,  is  indeed   its  inseparable   correlate  in  perpetual 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  595 

communion  with  the  active  mind.  Noumenon  apart  from 
phenomenon  cannot  indeed  become  the  object  of  cognition ; 
but  in  every  phenomenon  of  the  cognitive  sort  noumenon 
stands  present  and  self-revealing. 

Moreover,  the  philosophy  of  knowledge  shows  that  of  all 
the  different  kinds  and  degrees  of  knowledge  the  type  of  per- 
fection is  that  which  the  developed  cognitive  Self  experiences 
when  it  knows,  in  trained  and  ripened  self-consciousness,  the 
reality  of  its  own  Self.  Such  self-consciousness  is  the  integer^ 
as  it  were,  of  cognition  ;  all  other  knowing  is  fractional  and  rela- 
tively imperfect.  The  same  thing  is  true  in  respect  of  moral 
consciousness  which  is  true  in  respect  of  all  the  conscious 
manifestations  of  the  Self.  That  J  myself  feel  the  binding 
force  of  duty,  the  attractiveness  and  obligation  of  the  virtu- 
ous life,  that  I  make  judgments  of  right  and  wrong  which  are 
followed  by  feelings  of  approbation  or  disapprobation,  and  of 
merit  or  demerit  —  all  this  neither  needs  proof  nor  admits  of 
disproof.  I  know  my  own  moral  selfhood  with  this  immediate 
and  indubitable  certainty.  More  indirectly,  and  with  a  lower 
degree  of  certainty,  I  know  other  selves  to  be  constructed  ethi- 
cally in  a  large  and  substantial  agreement  with  my  own  moral 
selfhood.  This  substantial  agreement  is  not  essentially  im- 
paired, much  less  is  it  abrogated,  by  many  and  varied  differ- 
ences in  judgment  over  what  is  right  in  conduct  or  most 
commendable  in  character. 

Nor  can  it  be  said  that  the  Moral  Ideal  is  itself  wholly 
removed  beyond  the  limits  of  human  knowledge.  Like  all 
other  ideals,  it  has  a  marked  kaleidoscopic  character.  As  the 
hand  of  time  turns  it,  the  colors  arrange  themselves  in  dif- 
ferent patterns.  The  realization,  too,  of  the  moral  ideal  is 
neither  to  be  known  nor  achieved  as  though  it  were  some 
simple  fact  of  experience,  or  some  one  deed  of  will  that  could 
be  undertaken  and  finished  once  for  all.  But  to  speak  of 
this  ideal  as  illusory,  and  to  regard  human  experience  with  it 
as  devoid  of  all  truly  cognitive  activity,  is  to  introduce  a 


596  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

schism  in  human  nature  which  is  quite  unwarranted  by  the 
facts.  For  each  moral  being  the  force  and  value  of  his  own 
moral  ideal  may  be  made  a  matter  of  knowledge  in  the  same 
way  as  any  of  the  other  of  the  individual's  complex  experi- 
ences. And  in  the  broader  fields  of  history  there  is  knowl- 
edge to  be  gained  touching  the  progress  which  the  race  has 
made  in  the  past  by  way  of  forming  and  reforming,  and  of 
progressively  realizing  its  moral  ideals. 

The  philosophy  of  conduct  may,  then,  avail  itself  of  all  the 
positive  conclusions  of  the  philosophy  of  knowledge  with 
reference  to  the  possibility  and  trustworthy  character  of 
man's  knowing  faculty  when  applied  to  his  ethical  experience. 
Neither  dogmatism  nor  agnosticism,  neither  the  attitude  of 
unquestioning  and  thorough-going  certainty,  nor  the  attitude 
of  a  scoffing  or  a  despairing  scepticism,  becomes  the  student 
of  the  problems  which  the  ethical  constitution  and  develop- 
ment of  humanity  has  to  propose.  The  nature,  the  guaranty, 
and  the  limits  of  knowledge,  when  the  effort  to  know  is 
directed  upon  the  phenomena  and  principles  and  ideals  of  the 
moral  life,  are  not  essentially  changed. 

If  we  may  borrow  from  philosophy  a  theory  of  knowledge 
which  secures  the  highest  interests  of  ethics  from  becoming 
a  wreck  in  full  sight  of  the  eyes  of  reason,  the  same  thing  is 
true  of  a  theory  of  reality.  General  metaphysics  may  be 
summoned  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  more  special  meta- 
physics of  ethics.  As  to  the  propriety  and  the  method  of 
this  summons  I  do  not  need  to  repeat  what  has  been  either 
said  or  implied,  over  and  over  again.  With  us,  metaphysics 
—  of  whatever  name  or  sort  —  is  never  wholly  a  priori  in 
conception  or  in  method.  The  rather  is  it  the  critical  and 
speculative  treatment  of  the  conceptions  and  principles  which 
are  discoverable  in  experience.  So  then,  if  one  raises  the 
problem  which  is  before  us  at  the  present  time  —  namely, 
May  the  ground  of  morality  be  found  in  some  rational  concep- 
tion of  the  World-Ground  ?  —  one  can  properly  revert  to  the 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  597 

inquiry :  And  what  does  metaphysics,  as  a  theory  of  reality, 
have  to  tell  us  of  the  characteristic  marks  of  that  Being 
which  it  calls  the  "  World-Ground "  (or  by  some  similar 
term)  ? 

When  this  question  is  asked  of  metaphysics,  regarded  as  a 
critical  and  systematic  theory  of  reality,  its  answer  is  not 
equivocal ;  although  the  answer  has,  of  course,  been  given  by 
different  philosophers  with  varying  degrees  of  clearness  and 
comprehensiveness,  and  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  certain  names 
may  be  quoted  in  denial  of  the  possibility  of  systematic  meta- 
physics at  all.  Among  these  names  the  greatest  —  anticipat- 
ing or  following  the  example  of  their  most  illustrious  leader, 
the  ''astounding  Kant"  —  have,  after  all,  found  some  way, 
either  by  faith,  or  revelation,  or  philosophical  intuition,  of  in- 
troducing more  or  less  covertly  the  very  knowledge  (or  its 
equivalent)  the  possibility  of  which  they  had  previously  denied. 
And  when  such  fragments,  or  rather  grudging  acknowledg- 
ments, are  pieced  together,  and  ilhimined  by  further  reflective 
thinking,  they  are  wont  to  arrange  themselves  into  a  form, 
having  a  certain  consistency  with  the  same  permanent  and  un- 
alterable view  which  the  common  reason  of  man  holds  respect- 
ing the  nature  of  all  that  is  Real.  This  statement  is  about  as 
true  of  Mr.  Spencer  and  Mr.  Bradley  as  it  is  of  Jacob  Boehme 
or  of  Schleiermacher.  Small  wonder  if  it  is  so ;  for  no  im- 
mersion in  modern  physical  science,  or  academic  exclusiveness, 
or  sceptical  disregard  for  the  common  opinions  and  faiths  of 
humanity,  or  special  respect  for  the  extra-mundane,  or  belief 
in  the  value  and  validity  of  belief,  essentially  changes  the 
nature  of  the  reason  of  man.  They  and  we  all  are  finally 
brought  around  upon  our  knees  before  the  same  confessional : 
homo  sum  —  not  a  god  or  an  angel,  nor  yet  a  mere  phenome- 
non or  sum-total  consisting  of  a  series  of  phenomena  that 
never  attain  any  reality  beyond  the  extra-phenomenon  of  a 
certain  appearance  of  quasi-VQ^Wty. 

There  is,  then,  a  well  reasoned  and  defensible  answer  which 


598  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

a  general  and  systematic  metaphysics  can  deliver  to  the  meta- 
physics of  ethics,  when  the  latter  cries  out  for  assistance  in 
the  effort  to  answer  its  own  more  ultimate  and  profound 
inquiries.  What  are  we  warranted  in  affirming  as  defensible 
knowledge  regarding  the  Being  of  the  World-Ground  ?  In 
few  words  it  is  this :  What  philosophy  calls  the  Absolute  or 
the  World-Ground  is  Will,  informed  and  guided  by  Reason,  and 
immanent  as  progressively  realizing  its  own  Ideas  in  all  that 
of  which  we  have  experience.  As  I  have  elsewhere^  said,  in 
summing  up  the  conclusions  of  a  lengthy  discussion  of  the 
problems  of  metaphysics,  our  human  way  of  knowing  the 
World-Ground  is  "  a  way  of  conceiving  the  '  Being  of  the  World ' 
after  the  analogy  of  the  Life  of  a  Self  as  a  striving  toward  a 
completer  self-realization  under  the  consciously  accepted  motif 
of  immanent  Ideas.  The  principle,  as  a  postulate  of  all  reas- 
oning, and  so  of  all  science,  implies  (1)  some  sort  of  unitary 
Being  for  the  really  existent ;  (2)  that  this  Being  is  Will ; 
(3j  that  the  differentiation  of  the  activity  of  this  Will,  and 
the  connection  of  the  differentiated  '  momenta,'  —  the  separ- 
ate beings  of  the  world,  is  teleological  and  rational  like  that 
of  our  own  Self."  In  one  word,  the  Being  of  the  World,  the 
World-Ground,  is  a  rational  Will,  everywhere  and  always 
energizing  for  the  realizing  of  its  own  ideas.  The  Absolute 
is  a  Self :  all  the  seeming  separate  beings  and  happenings  of 
which  man  has  experience  have  their  ground  in  this  Abso- 
lute Self. 

And  now  when  it  is  objected  that  this  is  an  anthropomorphic 
view  of  the  so-called  World-Ground,  that  it  is,  if  not  avow- 
edly at  any  rate  covertly,  a  purely  human  and  limited  way  of 

1  In  the  treatise  already  referred  to  I  have  shown  this  to  be  true,  with  more  of 
detailed  and  constant  appeal  to  the  conceptions  and  principles  adopted  by  the  par- 
ticular sciences,  than,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  has  hitherto  been  employed  by  any 
similar  treatise.  All  the  so-called  "  categories,"  as  they  are  actually  embodied,  so 
to  say,  in  the  very  structure  of  every  form  of  science  and  involved  in  all  the 
growth  of  science,  have  there  been  given  a  thorough  critical  treatment.  To  this 
treatise,  therefore,  I  must  refer  the  reader  who  asks  for  further  proof  in  support 
of  the  propositions  made  above.     Compare  A  Theory  of  Reality,  p.  547. 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  599 

conceiving  of  a  hypothetical  Reality,  the  objection  must  be 
admitted.  But  on  taking  it  back  to  the  philosophy  of  knowl- 
edge for  re-examination,  this  objection  does  not  appear  to 
have  either  the  bearing  or  the  force  which  is  claimed  for  it. 
For  it  is  seen  that,  as  an  argument  for  scepticism  or  agnosti- 
cism, it  dwells  only  upon  the  negative  and  limited  aspects  of 
human  knowledge,  and  largely  or  wholly  neglects  its  positive 
and  constantly  extending  guaranties  and  triumphs.  More- 
ever,  its  psychological  analysis  of  knowledge  is  markedly 
defective ;  its  logical  outcome  is  the  destruction  of  the  concep- 
tions and  assumptions  which  enter  into  all  the  particular 
sciences,  as  well  as  into  all  human  practice  and  social  inter- 
course ;  and,  finally,  the  more  consistent  logically  it  aims  to 
become,  the  nearer  does  it  approach  the  point  where  it  is 
obliged,  by  a  kind  of  intellectual  hara-kiri,  to  destroy  itself 
and  all  its  own  works  as  integral  portions  of  human  thinking 
and  knowing. 

On  the  contrary,  the  philosophy  of  knowledge  and  the 
theory  of  reality  supplement  and  confirm  each  other,  in  all 
those  forms  of  both  which  have  been  advocated  by  the  reflec- 
tive thinkers  who  have  managed  somehow  to  escape  the  results 
of  a  scepticism  that  ends  in  agnosticism  rather  than  in  a  crit- 
ical reconstruction  of  the  conception  answering  to  the  term, 
"  the  World- Ground."  Taken  together  into  our  confidence, 
these  two  branches  of  philosophical  discipline  show  how 
all  man's  cognitive  processes  and  achievements  of  knowledge  — 
whether  practical,  scientific,  or  speculative  —  culminate  in 
substantially  the  same  view.  They  all  assume  that  the  world 
in  which  man  lives  is  a  manifestation  of  a  Reality  of  Will 
and  Reason  —  a  Mind- World.  They  all  contribute  proofs 
toward  the  progressively  clearer  and  better  establishment  upon 
grounds  of  experience,  of  the  very  assumption  upon  which 
experience  itself  is  grounded.  This  basic  circular  constitu- 
tion of  human  experience,  which  grows  out  of  those  relations 
to  reality  in  which  the  cognitive  powers  of  man's  mind  place 


600  PHILOSOPHY   OF   CONDUCT 

him,  instead  of  being  a  vicious  circle  in  argument,  is  itself 
the  foundation  upon  which  the  validity  and  the  value  of  all 
argument  must  always  rest.  As  knowledge  grows,  man's  con- 
ception of  reality  becomes  more  comprehensive  and  more  pro- 
found. The  assumption  which  underlies  all  knowledge  itself 
becomes  the  better  understood,  the  more  obviously  proved 
true,  by  the  growth  of  human  knowledge.  The  postulate  is 
immanent  in  all  science ;  all  scientific  development  confirms 
and  illustrates  the  postulate.  This  World  is  known  by  man 
as  the  manifestation  of  Will  and  Reason.  The  Reality  made 
apparent  by  all  man's  experience  is  Personal  ;  the  World- 
Ground  is  rightly  and  rationally  conceived  of  as  an  Abso- 
lute Self.  If  now,  more  of  trustworthy  knowledge  is  required 
respecting  the  fundamental  characteristics  of  that  Being 
which  the  World-Ground  is  known  to  be,  it  can  be  obtained 
only  from  a  study  of  the  philosophy  of  Mind.  This  branch 
of  philosophy  undertakes  to  discover  and  expound  what  may 
be  known  as  to  the  nature  of  a  Person;  or  —  to  use  a 
term  which  may  possibly  seem  less  ambiguous  —  of  a  Self. 
The  reality,  the  unity,  the  identity,  and  whatever  other  char- 
acteristics may  be  discerned  as  belonging  to  the  essential 
nature  of  a  Self,  are  all  revealed  —  however  imperfectly 
grasped  and  hazily  conceived  —  with  an  indubitable  certainty 
in  the  experience  of  every  human  life.  What  it  is  to  be  real, 
to  be  one,  to  be  self-identical,  as  all  selves  are,  man  does  not 
need  to  go  to  the  heavens  above,  or  to  the  depths  of  the  seas, 
or  to  the  inter-stellar  spaces,  to  find  out.  What  he  does  find, 
so  surely  that  it  reaches  the  acme  of  conceivable  knowledge, 
is  not  correctly  summarized  either  by  the  shallow  positivism 
which  reduces  the  Self  to  a  series  of  phenomena  which  con- 
ceal instead  of  revealing  reality,  or  by  the  seemingly  pro- 
found but  always  unclear  ontology  which  assumes  an  un- 
knowable and  inconceivable  "  substance,"  a  sort  of  dead 
Ding-an-sichheit,  that  cannot  break  through  the  phenomena. 
The  reality,  the  unity,  and  the  identity,  of  every  human  Self 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  601 

are  just  such  actual  characteristics  of  its  own  living  and 
conscious  activity  as  severally  answer  to  these  words.  And 
to  affirm  that  man  does  not  know  for  what  actual  character- 
istics these  words  are  warranted  to  stand  is  another  of  those 
distressing  and  self-destructive  absurdities  into  which  the 
sceptical  attitude  toward  experience  is  constantly  leading 
astray  the  devotees  of  metaphysical  philosophy. 

Nor  is  there  better  reason  for  the  conjecture  that  the  char- 
acteristics of  Reality,  Unity,  and  permanency  or  Self-identity, 
when  attributed  to  the  World-Ground,  have  reference  to  some 
unknowable  and  inconceivable  quasi-dead  core  of  its  Being. 
To  be  real,  to  be  one,  to  be  self -identical,  is,  for  the  Absolute 
Self,  essentially  the  same  as  for  every  finite  Self.  To  be  a 
Ding-an-sich,  in  the  Kantian  meaning  of  the  word  (if  clear 
meaning  there  be  which  can  be  fixed  upon  all  of  Kant's  uses 
of  these  words),  is  surely  nothing  for  the  gods  to  covet.  Ding- 
an-sichheit  is  poor  "  stuff "  out  of  which  to  make  Divinity. 
The  rather  is  it  especially  important,  as  it  were,  for  the  Abso- 
lute Self  that  he  should  have  in  its  most  unlimited  and  highest 
degree  of  perfection  that  self-realizing,  self-unifying,  self- 
identifying  power,  which  is  to  some  degree  possessed  by  every 
finite  Self. 

What,  then,  a  critical  and  systematic  study  of  man,  and  of 
the  world  which  constitutes  his  environment,  contributes  to 
the  philosophy  of  conduct  is  this  :  The  World-Ground  must 
be  conceived  of,  and  may  (speaking  broadly  and  generously) 
be  said  to  be  known,  as  an  Absolute  Self.  It  is  real,  unitary, 
self-consistent  and  self-identical,  as  a  self-conscious  Will  and 
Mind  alone  can  be.  Thus  much  by  way  of  foundation  for  a 
metaphysics  of  ethics  may  be  fairly  borrowed  from  other  more 
fundamental  branches  of  philosophy. 

The  philosophy  of  conduct  inquires,  then,  whether  any  of 
the  characteristics  of  the  Moral  Self  which  man  knows  him- 
self to  be,  can  properly  also  be  attributed  to  the  World-Ground. 
By  this  latter  term  ("  the  World-Ground")  we  express  a  general 


602  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

notion  of  metaphysics.  Can  the  attributes  of  personal  Being 
be  so  extended  in  their  application  to  this  notion  as  to  find  in 
its  reality  the  ground  for  all  the  phenomena,  the  laws,  and  the 
history  of  man's  moral  constitution  and  moral  development  ? 
The  full  answer  to  this  problem  requires  a  critical  survey  of 
nearly  the  entire  sphere  covered  by  the  philosophy  of  religion ; 
indeed  the  sphere  covered  by  this  survey  is  common  to  this 
branch  of  philosophy  and  to  the  metaphysics  of  ethics. 

In  the  very  brief  sketch  of  an  argument  which  will  follow, 
two  lines  are  seen  to  converge  upon  one  conclusion.  Of  these 
two  lines  one  is  chiefly  negative,  the  other  positive.  The 
former  tends  to  show  that  without  admitting  that  conception 
of  God  as  the  World-Ground  wliich  the  most  mature  reflec- 
tive consciousness  of  humanity  presents,  the  foundations  of 
morality  are  left  totally  unexplained.  The  other  tends  to 
show  that  the  truths  involved  in  this  conception  furnish  the 
mind  with  the  best  available  explanation  of  the  fundamental 
facts  and  truths  of  ethics. 

The  non-religious,  not  to  say  the  irreligious,  view  of  man, 
his  origin,  constitution,  history,  and  destiny,  cannot  suggest 
any  explanation  of  the  admitted  facts  and  truths  of  his  own 
ethical  experience.  The  failure  of  the  ethics  of  "  Naturalism  " 
to  explain  itself,  or  in  any  satisfying  way  to  answer,  or  even 
to  attack,  the  ultimate  problem  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct 
has  been  emphasized  by  no  one  more  strongly  than  by  Pro- 
fessor Huxley.  According  to  this  authority  on  the  processes 
and  laws  of  so-called  "  Nature,"  all  modern  as  well  as  ancient 
scientific  effort  has  utterly  failed  "  to  make  existence  in- 
telligible ; "  but  it  has  especially  failed  "  to  bring  the  order  of 
things  into  harmony  with  the  moral  sense  of  man."  ^  The 
"  injustice  of  the  nature  of  things  "  is  quite  "  unfathomable ; " 
"  the  cosmic  process  has  no  sort  of  relation  to  moral  ends ;  " 
the  "  ethical  process "  involves  a  checking  of  the  "  cosmic 
process  "  and  the  substitution  for  it  of  something  radically 

1  Evolution  and  Ethics,  1893,  and  the  Prolegomena,  1894. 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  603 

different ;  the  life  of  virtue  is  opposed  to  that  which  leads  to 
success  in  the  cosmic  struggle  for  existence.  And  to  Mr. 
Spencer's  question,  "  If  the  ethical  man  is  not  a  product  of 
the  cosmic  process,  what  is  he  a  product  of  ?  "  the  naturalistic 
view  of  ethical  phenomena  has,  of  course,  no  sufficient  answer. 

Now,  as  I  have  elsewhere  shown,^  the  merely  naturalistic 
view  of  so-called  "  Nature  "  itself  leaves  all  the  most  pressing 
of  our  questions  unanswered ;  it  is  indeed,  quite  unable  to 
justify  or  even  to  explain  the  conception  wliich  it  endeavors 
to  embody  in  this  capitalized  word  —  the  nature  spelled  with 
a  big  N.  "  Except  in  so  far  as  it  is  known  by  having  additional 
characteristics  of  Spirit,  Nature  is  as  '  brute  and  inanimate ' 
as  was  the  old-fashioned  but  now  extinct  conception  of 
matter."  "  The  genetic  and  architectonic  power "  which 
modern  science  puts  into  the  word  is  all  spiritual  in  its 
origin  ;  it  is  the  result  of  that  inevitable  and  legitimate 
construing  of  the  world  of  things  after  the  analogy  of  our 
indubitable  experiences  with  the  world  of  Self.  It  amounts, 
in  the  last  result,  to  affirming  that  "  Spirit  is  the  true  and 
Essential  Being  of  so-called  Nature."*^  Certainly  no  explana- 
tion of  the  moral  nature,  moral  life,  and  moral  development 
of  man  can  be  derived  from  this^  the  naturalistic  conception 
of  nature ;  this  conception  may  even  be  said  to  be  opposed 
to  any  morality  at  all,  and  more  especially  to  any  such  view 
of  the  nature  of  moral  sanctions  and  moral  ideals  as  a 
fair  study  of  ethical  phenomena  establishes  in  a  matter-of-fact 
way.  But  then,  no  values  of  any  kind,  nothing  that  has 
worth,  whether  from  the  artistic,  the  ethical,  or  the  religious 
point  of  view,  can  gain  the  least  credence  in  the  creed,  if  it  is 
consistently  maintained,  of  such  a  form  of  Naturalism. 

It  is  not  Nature,  truly  conceived  and  profoundly  known, 
which  is  antagonistic  to  morality,  so  much  as  the  wholly  in- 
adequate and  largely  false  conception  of  nature  held  by  tlie 
naturalistic  philosophy.     One  cannot,  of  course,  claim  that 

1  Especially,  A  Theory  of  Reality,  chap,  xvii :  Nature  and  Spirit 


604  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

the  nature  of  things,  when  man's  ethical  nature  is  left  out  of 
the  account,  will  serve  to  account  for  the  origin,  sanctions, 
principles,  and  development  of  morality.  But  when  this 
inadequate  view  of  Nature  is  itself  transcended,  one  cannot, 
on  the  other  hand,  so  bluntly  affirm  the  total  opposition  of 
the  "  cosmic  process  "  and  the  "  ethical  process."  From  the 
higher  point  of  view,  one  may  even  attain  glimpses,  if  not  a 
full  vision,  of  the  truth  that  both  processes  are  parts  of  one 
great  and  all-inclusive  process,  and  that  both  lead  to  one  and 
the  same  "  far-off  divine  event."  If  Morality  asks  Nature  to 
show  how  she  could  come  from  nature's  womb  and  be  nature's 
offspring,  the  question  may  only  evoke  the  return  of  the 
question : 

♦"  Ah,  child,'  she  cries,  'that  strife  divine, 
Whence  was  it,  for  it  was  not  mine  ? '  " 

And  yet  the  ceaseless,  seemingly  immoral, ''  struggle  for  exist- 
ence "  with  which  all  Nature  is  laden  may  have  the  same  ulti- 
mate ground  and  ultimate  goal  before  it  as  the  ceaseless  and 
by  no  means  less  painful  strife  of  Humanity  after  the  moral 
Ideal.  The  inquiry  after  the  origin  and  the  sanctions  of  both 
may  thus  elicit  the  answer : 

"  '  Twas  when  the  heavenly  home  I  trod, 
And  lay  upon  the  breast  of  God." 

It  would  scarcely  seem  necessary  to  assume  the  obligation  of 
showing  the  failure  of  Naturalism  to  furnish  a  metaphysics 
of  ethics,  after  its  failure  has  been  so  emphasized  by  the 
students  of  the  "  cosmic  process "  themselves.  The  truth 
seems  to  be  that  we  have  here  one  of  those  problems  relating 
to  the  comparison  of  incomparables,  which  answer  themselves 
in  the  very  asking.  Cosmic  processes,  conceived  of  in  the 
purely  naturalistic,  or  —  what  is  the  same  thing  —  the  totally 
unspiritual  and  non-theistic  way,  are  asked  to  originate 
beings  who  believe  in  the  value,  who  respect  the  sanctions, 
who  safeguard  the  principles,  and  who  secure  the  develop- 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  605 

ment  of  ideals  of  conduct,  not  only  of  the  individual  but  also 
of  the  social  kind.  That  the  belief  is  often  weak,  the  respect 
ineffective,  the  safeguarding  violated,  and  the  security  in- 
complete does  not  essentially  change  the  conditions  of  the 
problem.  For  the  problem  is  just  this :  How  can  conscious 
conceptions  of  worth  arise  as  the  resultant  of  mere  blind 
happenings  in  fact  ?  How  can  such  actual  happenings  pro- 
duce a  respect  for  that  which  is  conceived  of  as  claiming  the 
right  to  be  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  is  not  ?  How  can  the 
clash  of  irrational  and  impersonal  forces  produce  a  tender 
and  pious  regard  for  personal  interests  —  especially  when 
these  are  the  interests  of  others  that  must  be  secured  by  a 
more  or  less  complete  surrender  of  one's  own  happiness? 
The  old-fashioned  metaphysical  saw,  ex  nihilo  nihil  fit,  may 
not  seem  sufficient  to  put  a  check  upon  such  e volutin  g  of  the 
moral  from  the  non-moral,  or  the  positively  immoral,  as  all 
the  attempts  of  Naturalism  in  Ethics  to  answer  such  ques- 
tions obviously  require.  But  if  ever  there  was  an  explaining 
which  did  not  explain,  a  borrowing  of  tenets  which  are  not 
current  coin  and  which  have  no  power  to  pay  anything  back, 
such  a  transaction  is  that  which  goes  on  whenever  a  natural- 
istic metaphysics  undertakes  to  solve  the  metaphysical  prob- 
lems of  ethics.  Far  better  to  be  frankly  agnostic  than  to 
accept  such  answers  to  one's  inquiries  for  ultimate  truth. 
Far  better  to  cling  without  light  or  hope  to  the  dark  shadow 
of  a  form  we  call  our  Duty  than  to  explain  its  origin  and 
sanctions  in  so  absurd  a  manner  as  Naturalism  in  Ethics 
offers. 

The  quite  complete  incompetency  of  that  view  of  the  his- 
torical evolution  of  morality  which  does  not  recognize  the 
personal  character  of  the  Moral  Life  and  the  Moral  Ideal,  as 
to  both  its  origin  and  its  sanctions,  has  been  pointed  out  many 
times  in  our  past  discussions.  It  was,  indeed,  the  confession 
of  this  incompetency  which  threw  upon  us  the  necessity  of 
resorting  to  a  more  fundamental  philosophical  discussion  in 


606  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

order  to  get  light  for  the  solution  of  the  ultimate  ethical  prob- 
lems. That  Positivism  in  ethics  which  merely  notes  the  facts 
of  certain  historical  conditions  of  the  development  of  morality 
Is  as  unsatisfactory  as  is  Naturalism  in  ethics.  Again  we  are 
obliged  to  say  that  it  is  better  frankly  to  confess  our  agnosti- 
cism than  to  make  the  phenomena  of  man's  moral  constitution 
and  moral  evolution,  by  a  skilful  but  always  hypothetical  re- 
arrangement according  to  some  preconceived  theory,  seem  to 
explain  themselves.  He  should  have  no  difficulty  with  any  of 
the  stories  of  the  wonders  wrought  by  Aladdin's  lamp  who 
professes  to  understand  how  a  World  absolutely  indifferent  to 
distinctions  of  moral  worth  could  give  rise  to  an  ethico-social 
being  like  man,  and  to  his  ethical  and  social  development. 

And  now,  before  turning  to  the  more  positive  answer  which 
the  philosopher  has,  at  his  best  estate,  to  offer  for  the  solution 
of  the  ultimate  problem  in  ethics  that  concerns  the  relations 
of  the  ground  of  morality  to  the  World-Ground,  let  us  once 
more  endeavor  clearly  to  see  what  the  problem  is.  The  ex- 
istence of  morality  amongst  men  is  a  fact.  Anticipations, 
forecasts,  preparations  for  its  coming  may  be  detected  in  the 
animal  kingdom  lying  lower  down  than  man,  and  even  in  the 
systematic  arrangement  of  things.  For  although  neither 
things  nor  the  lower  animals  seem  to  be  wholly  equipped  with 
moral  selfhood,  they  do  possess  certain  basic  qualifications  for 
moral  development  in  common  with  man  ;  and  both  things 
and  the  lower  animals  undoubtedly  have  important  functions 
to  perform  in  furnishing  the  physical  basis  and  the  physical 
and  social  environment  for  man's  moral  life  and  moral  devel- 
opment. In  spite  of  Mr.  Huxley's  low  estimate  of  the  moral 
value  of  the  "  cosmic  processes  "  —  which,  with  him,  include 
all  the  different  lower  stages  in  the  evolution  of  animal  life 
preceding  the  time  when  man  became  a  Moral  Self  —  there 
are  good  reasons  for  the  belief  that  these  processes,  too,  can- 
not be  illumined  fully  or  understood  aright  until  they  are 
regarded  from  the  ethical  point  of  view.    They,  too,  participate, 


MORALITY  AND  THE   WORLD-GROUND  607 

in  a  way,  in  a  system  where  ideas  of  value,  and  ideals  of  moral 
development^  have  the  highest  sanction  and  the  most  univer- 
sal sway.  At  any  rate,  such  has  been  the  confidence,  not  only 
of  the  multitudes  who  do  not  think,  but  of  the  poets  and  the 
philosophers  of  the  human  race.  In  a  certain  Sanskrit  drama, 
for  example,^  a  wicked  prince  endeavors  to  persuade  a  parasite 
to  commit  murder  by  assuring  him  that  there  is  no  one  to 
witness  the  act.  Pariah  as  he  is,  he  faces  the  prince  in  con- 
fidence that  the  last  foundations  of  morality  are  not  subject  to 
human  influences,  and  thus  replies  in  indignant  language : 

"  All  nature  would  behold  the  crime, 
The  genii  of  the  grove,  the  sun,  the  moon, 
The  winds,  the  vaults  of  heaven,  the  firm-set  earth, 
Yama,  the  mighty  judge  of  all  who  die, 
Aye,  and  the  inner  conscience  of  the  soul." 

And  that  tried  human  soul,  the  girl  Antigone, ^  when  called 
upon  to  decide  between  her  loving  sense  of  personal  obligations 
and  the  mandates  of  the  supreme  human  authority  reinforced 
by  the  ripest  human  wisdom,  is  made  to  say  by  the  tragedian 
whose  insight  into  the  springs  of  human  life  has  never  been 
surpassed : 

"  It  was  not  Zeus  who  heralded  these  words, 
Nor  Justice,  helpmeet  of  the  gods  below, 
^T  was  they  who  satisfied  those  other  laws, 
And  set  their  record  in  the  human  heart. 
Nor  did  I  deem  thy  heraldings  so  mighty, 
That  thou,  a  mortal  man,  couldst  trample  on 
The  unwritten  and  unchanging  laws  of  heaven. 
They  are  not  of  to-day  or  yesterday ; 
But  ever  live  and  no  one  doubts  their  birth-tide." 

This  confidence,  thus  poetically  expressed,  was  the  ground  of 
the  philosopher  Fichte's  assertion  :  "  The  world-order  is  in  the 
last  analysis  a  moral  order."     Or,  again,  as  another  writer 

1  See  Talboys  Wheeler's  Short  History  of  India,  p.  63. 

2  See  also  CEdipus,  846  f.  and  p.  572  of  this  book ;  and  comp.  Pfleiderer,  The 
Philosophy  of  Religion,  iv,  p.  240. 


608  PHILOSOPPIY  OF   CONDUCT 

has  expressed  the  same  truth  from  another  point  of  view : 
"  Man's  consciousness  of  himself  as  a  member  of  society  in- 
volves a  reference  to  a  cosmic  order." 

Doubtless  it  will  be  objected  to  all  this  that  we  are  here 
dealing  only  with  the  projecting  of  man's  moral  Selfhood  into 
the  phenomena  of  the  World,  in  the  midst  of  which  this  Self- 
hood  somehow   finds   its  origin  and  its   development.     The 
objection  is  true  in  fact ;  but  the  fact  to  which  objection  is 
made  is  the  very  thing  which  demands  explanation.     Why  do 
the  multitudes,  and  the  choicest  of  the  poets,  and  the  wisest 
of  the  philosophers,  find  themselves  impelled  to  regard  with 
this  moral  sympathy  that  system  of  things  in  which  their  own 
existence  and  development  have  their  ground  ?     Of  course,  it 
is  because  they  all  are  themselves  moral  beings.    But  the  very 
thing  to  be  accounted  for  is  the  existence  and  progress  of  moral 
beings,  as  arising  out  of  such  a  ground  and  existing  in  such 
an  environment.     Certainly,  man's  moral  nature,  the  experi- 
ence of  the  individual  with  himself  and  with  other  men  and 
with  things,  must  be  recognized  as  containing  the  sources,  the 
sanctions,  and  the  principles  of  his  own  moral  development. 
All  the  more  necessary  is  it,  therefore,  so  to  conceive  of  the 
origin  of  this  human  moral  nature,  of  its  reactions  upon  its 
environment,  and  of  its  progress  and  its  achievements,  —  so 
to  shape,  in  a  word,  the  explanation  of  all  that  is  distinctively 
ethical  in  human  experience,  —  as  to  bring  it  into  the  fullest 
harmony  with  all  our  other  most  trustworthy  conceptions  of 
Keality.     This,  I  assert,  can  be  done  only  by  identifying  the 
Ground  of  Morality  with  the  World-Ground.     And  such  an 
identification  is  possible  only  if  the  World-Ground  be  conceived 
of  as  the  absolute  moral  Person,  the  ultimate  Source  of  all 
the  ethical  life  and  ethical  development  of  humanity.     I  shall 
now  present  this  general  position  very  briefly  as  it  appears  to 
me   defensible   from   several   closely   related   but   somewhat 
different  points  of  view. 

And,  first,  in  God,  or  the  moral  personality  of  the  World- 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  609 

Ground,  we  discover  the  more  ultimate  source  of  whatever 
common  standards  of  conduct  have  prevailed,  so  far  as  inves- 
tigations can  inform  us,  in  all  ages  of  the  ethical  history  of 
humanity.  Certain  of  these  standards  are,  indeed,  more 
especially  of  a  purely  utilitarian  character.  They  spring  up 
everywhere  as  the  result  of  that  striving  for  freedom  from  pain, 
and  for  the  obtaining  of  pleasure,  in  which  man  joins  all  sen- 
tient life  and  in  which  he  employs  his  superior  intellect.  But 
this  merely  utilitarian  explanation  of  the  prevalence  of  com- 
mon standards  of  morality  will  not  apply  to  all  cases,  nor  is  it 
the  complete  explanation  of  any  of  the  forms  in  which  a  moral 
code  establishes  itself.  An  inner  motive  is  especially  neces- 
sary to  account  for  some  of  these  standards ;  indeed,  some 
inner  motive  seems  necessary  to  supplement  the  explanations 
of  an  external  utilitarianism  in  order  to  account  for  the  origin 
and  prevalence  of  nearly  all  of  them.  This  inner  motive  uni- 
formly appears  to  involve  a  recognition  of  values  that  are  not 
wholly  of  the  utilitarian  order.  For  example,  in  some  cases 
the  gods  are  deemed  worthy  to  be  pleased ;  or  their  fear  re- 
strains the  would-be  wrong-doer.  This,  or  some  other  form  of 
impulse,  which,  like  whisperings  from  another  and  invisible 
world,  compels  men  to  the  recognition  of  the  more  subtle 
spiritual  connections  of  their  own  selves  with  a  mysterious 
and  invisible  Selfhood,  has  always  —  to  quote  the  words  of 
another  —  added  "  incalculably  to  the  power  of  religious  ethics 
to  hold  its  own  against  the  tendency  to  an  external  utilitarian- 
ism which  springs  so  easily  from  a  purely  objective  considera- 
tion of  moral  phenomena." 

It  has  been  by  means  of  both  the  co-operation  and  the 
antagonism  between  inner  spiritual  motives  and  the  more  ex- 
ternal utilitarian  considerations,  in  action  and  reaction  with 
the  "  cosmic  processes,"  that  tlie  human  race  has  established 
in  authority  over  itself  certain  common  standards  of  morality. 
These  standards,  psychologically  considered,  are  the  forms  of 
mental  activity  that  are  everywhere   regarded  as  right  and 

39 


610  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

that  together  constitute  the  virtuous  life.  Historically  con- 
sidered, they  are  the  forms  of  external  behavior,  the  manners 
and  customs,  the  laws  unwritten  or  written,  which,  however 
they  may  differ  in  respect  of  many  details,  still  bear  witness 
to  the  essential  universality  of  the  conduct  that  is  recognized 
as  valid  for  man  as  man.  But  the  historical  process  which 
derives  its  factors  from  all  three  sources  —  namely,  from 
spiritual  influences,  from  utilitarian  considerations,  and  from 
physical  processes  —  and  which  somehow  manages  to  work 
out  a  planful  structure  of  an  ethico-social  kind,  challenges 
philosophy  to  furnish  to  it  a  satisfactory  account  of  itself. 
This  account  philosophy  must  bring  into  accord  with  its 
conclusions  upon  cognate  subjects.  Its  account  reads  as 
follows :  Any  historical  process  like  the  moral  development 
of  humanity  is  proof  of  the  presence  in  the  World  of  a 
rational  Will,  which  is  working  in  the  interests  of  moral  values, 
and  which  is  establishing  over  all  moral  selves  the  regency 
of  moral  standards  in  the  only  way  in  which  such  establish- 
ing is  possible.  For,  in  the  progress  of  morality,  man  must 
accomplish  the  Divine  Will  by  making  that  Will  man's  own ; 
in  other  words,  the  Divine  standards  of  righteousness  and  of 
virtuous  living  must  be  made  universally  effective  by  the 
work  of  God  in  human  ethical  history,  as  mere  "  cosmic 
processes "  or  "  external  utilitarian "  considerations  alone 
cannot  make  them,  even  although  working  in  conjunction  with 
influences  from  these  processes  and  these  considerations. 

This  same  thought  is  still  further  emphasized  and  enforced 
when  humanity  is  considered  as  actually  experiencing  a  real 
moral  progress.  This  manner  of  progress  implies,  on  the 
one  side,  the  elevating  of  the  currently  accepted  standards  of 
morality ;  and,  on  the  other  side,  it  implies  the  spreading  of 
these  rising  standards  over  a  larger  and  larger  portion 
of  the  race.  That  there  is  a  moral  progress  of  this  sort 
actually  taking  place,  historical  and  anthropological  data 
would  seem  to  show.     The  race  may  not,  on  the  whole,  be 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  611 

growing  better  men.  But  the  current  standards  acknowl- 
edged as  obligatory  are  being  raised  ;  and  a  larger  number 
of  mankind  are  being  made  acquainted  with  what  those 
higher  standards  are.  This  is  a  work  similar  to  that  which 
religion  assigns  to  Divine  Providence  and  to  Divine  Self- 
revelation.  If  the  response  to  this  self-disclosure  of  the 
Infinite  Moral  Spirit  is  effective  in  actually  securing  among 
men,  not  only  intellectual  enlightenment  and  improved  judg- 
ment upon  matters  of  conduct,  but  also  the  purer  heart  and 
the  nobler  life,  then  religion  speaks  of  this  result  as  due  to 
Divine  inspiration.  Thus  religion  regards  the  raising  and 
the  spreading  of  the  standards  of  morality  among  men  as  due 
to  the  efficient  activity  of  God,  in  providence,  revelation,  and 
inspiration. 

Making  a  sufficiently  large  allowance  for  over-confidence 
in  details  of  argument,  for  excessive  naivete  in  expression, 
and  for  a  somewhat  too  frequent  and  often  dangerous  neglect 
of  modifying  considerations,  a  truly  philosophical  Theory 
of  Reality  can  receive  the  conclusions  of  the  religious 
consciousness  as  worthy  of  a  high  place  in  its  system  of  philo- 
sophical truths.  Any  completed  theory  of  reality  has  the  real- 
ities of  morality  to  take  into  its  account.  Ethical  facts  are 
no  less  facts  because  ethical.  Among  ethical  facts  not  the 
least  important  is  the  actual  existence  of  the  accepted  stand- 
ards of  conduct  and  of  the  current  judgments  upon  matters  of 
conduct.  The  explanation  of  their  existence  cannot  be  found 
wholly  in  any  purely  cosmic  process,  or  in  any  historical  process 
of  a  purely  utilitarian  character.  Ethical  facts  come  into  such 
supreme  importance  and  become  of  such  tremendous  import 
in  the  development  of  the  race,  through  a  sort  of  progressive 
synthesis  in  which  cosmic  processes,  utilitarian  interests, 
and  spiritual  ideals  and  motives  all  co-operate  to  a  common 
result.  We,  therefore,  find  this  synthetic  power  in  the 
Divine  Will ;  we  ascribe  this  complex  historico-ethical  evolu- 
tion to  the  Divine  Plan.     In  it  God,  the  ideally  righteous 


612  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

and  holy  Person,  is  realizing  his  immanent  ideas  as  to 
what  standard  humanity  ought,  by  its  own  co-operative 
responses  to  tliis  rational  and  holy  Will,  to  set  before  itself 
as  the  law  of  its  life  in  the  conduct  of  moral  selves  with  one 
another. 

In  this  sense,  then,  does  the  metaphysics  of  ethics  find  the 
origin  of  moral  laws  in  the  will  of  God.  Such  a  philo- 
sophical tenet  is  by  no  means  to  be  identified  with  that  tenet 
of  theological  ethics  which  finds  the  ground  of  the  right  in 
the  so-called  *'  bare  will "  of  God.  Of  hare  will,  whether 
in  physical  nature,  in  man,  or  in  the  Absolute,  a  discerning 
theory  of  reality  discovers  no  trace  at  all.  Schopenhauer's 
contemptuous  phrase — "wooden  iron"  —  for  the  justifiable 
conception  of  an  "  ought-to-will "  may  properly  be  turned 
against  his  own  attempt  to  identify  the  one  central  attribute 
of  the  World-Ground  with  the  being  of  bare  will.  In  physical 
nature,  in  man,  or  in  God,  nothing  is  "bare" — neither 
will,  nor  reason,  nor  feeling,  nor  any  of  the  other  psycho- 
logical aspects  or  attributions  of  the  unitary  being  we  know 
as  a  Self.  But  the  moral  laws  which  men  create,  as  the 
expression  of  their  higher  ideas  of  unseen  worth,  and  their 
experience  with  the  uses  of  things,  are  at  the  same  time  the 
offspring  of  the  righteous  and  holy  Will  of  God.  Here, 
that  is  true  which  was  seen  ^  to  be  true  of  all  finite  beings 
and  finite  events ;  they,  too,  share  in  the  will  and  wisdom 
of  the  Infinite;  they,  too,  are  "moments  "  in  the  self-realiza- 
tion of  the  personal  Absolute.  They  are  not  lost  in  Him, 
because  they  exist  in  Him ;  nor,  because  they  do  really  exist 
in  Him,  are  they  able  to  affirm  or  maintain  their  existence  in 
independence  of  Him. 

Man  creates  his  own  moral  standards.  This  is  true.  He 
makes,  in  the  progress  of  his  own  ethical  evolution  the 
moral  laws  which  he  either  does  well  in  keeping  or  suffers 

1  Compare  a  Theory  of  Keality,  Chap.  XIX.  "  The  World  and  the  Abso- 
lute." 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  613 

by  disobeying.  He  is  pre-eminently  his  own  law-giver  in  the 
moral,  as  he  is  not  in  the  physical  or  purely  mental  sphere. 
God  created  the  sun,  the  moon,  the  stars ;  God  created  the 
world  of  man's  physical  environment;  and  He  constituted 
the  laws  of  man's  mental  life,  —  those  constitutional  and 
inescapable  limitations  of  man's  thinking  processes,  of  his  sen- 
suous observations,  of  his  handling  and  moulding  of  things. 
But  did  He  have  aught  to  do  with  the  constitution  of  those 
invisible  spiritual  influences  which  co-operate  with  the  more 
visible  and  material  inducements  to  form  the  mandates  of  the 
moral  law  ?  Most  certainly  ;  and  none  the  less  truly  because 
so  true  is  it  that  man  forms  and  adopts,  without  being 
under  the  same  stricter  compulsion,  his  own  moral  standards 
and  moral  code.  For,  in  the  last  analysis,  human  thinking 
must  find  in  the  World-Ground  the  efficient  and  the  final 
cause  for  the  development  among  men  of  uniform  and  im- 
proved standards  of  conduct,  and  for  whatever  real  ethical 
progress  our  historical  and  anthropological  studies  enable  us 
to  claim  for  the  race.  The  continuous  illumination  of  the 
human  race  by  the  everywhere  scattered  lights  of  the  Moral 
Law  has  its  source  in  the  Sun  of  Righteousness,  the  ideally 
holy  and  righteous  Will  of  the  World-Ground. 

But,  second,  the  argument  is  again  reinforced  when  we 
consider  the  character  of  those  sanctions  which  are  every- 
where found  attributed  to  the  moral  standards  of  men.  These 
data  of  all  morality,  too,  must  find  their  ultimate  source  in  the 
same  World-Ground.  There  is  no  more  puzzling  problem  be- 
fore the  philosophy  of  conduct  than  is  involved  in  the  search 
after  the  ground  of  the  inviolable  sanctions,  the  sources  of  the 
indisputable  obligations,  of  the  moral  selfhood  and  moral  de- 
velopment of  man.  That  humanity  believes  in  some  such 
sanctions  and  acknowledges  the  existence  of  such  obligations, 
the  psychological  analysis  and  historical  survey  of  the  phe- 
nomena of  moral  consciousness  plainly  show.  It  is,  indeed, 
possible  to  find  in  the  social  environment  and  even  in  the 


614  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

"  cosmic  processes  "  a  partial  account  of  some  of  the  particular 
sanctions  which  belong  to  human  morality.  But  this  account, 
at  its  best,  is  only  partial. 

All  views  which  do  not  find  the  feeling  of  oughtness,  as 
uniquely  human  among  the  most  original  data  of  ethics,  have 
already  been  adjudged  unsatisfactory.  This  feeling  cannot 
be  regarded  as  the  outcome  or  expression  of  any  purely  cosmic 
process.  It  cannot  be  explained  as  a  resultant  solely  of  the 
working  of  social  influences  upon  the  mind  of  the  individual. 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  itself  a  basic  and  ultimate  fact  with 
which  every  attempt  to  account  for  the  origin  of  social  organ- 
izations among  men  must  always  reckon.  Social  organiza- 
tion among  men  presupposes  the  feeling  of  moral  obligation ; 
it  is  built  upon  the  recognition  of  sanctions  belonging  to  par- 
ticular kinds  of  conduct;  social  organization  as  mere  fact, 
then,  cannot  form  the  entire  satisfactory  account  of  the  exist- 
ence of  this  feeling  or  of  the  most  original  sanctions,  to  which 
the  feeling  responds.  It  is  true,  however,  that  the  direction 
and  concentration,  so  to  say,  of  the  sanctions  of  moral  con- 
sciousness upon  particular  courses  of  conduct  are  often  to  be 
explained  by  the  character  of  man's  physical  and  social 
environment.  These  environing  influences  often  answer, 
chiefly  or  in  part,  the  question  why  the  soul  of  man  recog- 
nizes as  obligatory  just  such,  rather  than  other,  forms  of  con- 
duct. This  general  historical  fact  explains  why  moral  laws 
appeal  to  a  sense  of  obligation ;  only  by  making  this  appeal 
do  the  customs  of  society,  or  its  more  deliberate  statute 
enactments  acquire  the  peculiar  sanctions  of  morality.  So, 
then,  whenever  certain  customs  or  laws  appear  to  be  due  to 
the  fortuitous  or  the  regular  operation  of  physical  or  social 
forces,  the  sanctions  of  these  same  customs  and  laws  also 
appear  to  be  derived  from  the  same  physical  or  social  forces. 
What  the  social  organization  commands  becomes  a  truly 
moral  mandate,  and  has  all  the  sanctions  belonging  to  such 
a  mandate.     Even  Nature,  in  a  more  uncertain  way  and  often 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  615 

by  a  kind  of  dumb,  pantomimic  gesture,  indicates  to  man 
her  orders  as  to  what  he  ahaW  feel  himself  obligated  to  do 
as  her  creature  and  the  subject  of  her  laws. 

Doubtless,  the  recognition  of  the  right  of  Nature  and  of 
human  Society  to  issue  mandates  to  the  individual  man,  and 
of  the  dutg  of  the  individual  to  respond  by  obedience  to  the  feel- 
ing thus  aroused  — in  this  way  acknowledging  the  moral  sanc- 
tions inherent  somehow  in  these  mandates  —  is  an  inestimable 
benefit  to  humanity.  Without  it  the  individual  would  speed- 
ily make  wreck  of  himself  by  antagonizing  both  nature  and 
society,  either  in  a  blindly  mechanical  way  or  else  in  a  no  less 
dangerous  but  wrongly  conscientious  fashion.  Indeed,  it  is 
just  this  failure  to  credit  the  cosmic  processes  and  the  social 
customs  and  institutions  with  the  amount  of  moral  character 
which  is  their  due  that  constitutes  the  arch-crime  of  Insolence ; 
this  crime  is  the  essence  of  tragedy ;  it  is  the  wrong-doing 
which  the  Divine  Will  as  Nemesis,  is  wont  so  surely  and 
frightfully  to  avenge.  The  opposite  of  this  crime  is  the  all- 
inclusive  virtue  of  the  judgment  to  which  the  name  of  a  pious 
Resignation  was  given.  Doubtless  it  is  in  general  right  for 
the  individual  man  to  obey  the  so-called  "  laws  of  nature,"  so 
soon  and  so  far  as  he  can  discover  what  those  laws  actually 
are.  Doubtless  also  a  man  will  not  generally  be  in  the  right, 
if  he  flouts  at  and  contemptuously  disobeys  the  customs  and 
laws  of  society. 

But  so  much  concession  as  this,  and  even  many  times  as 
much  of  concession,  does  not  make  it  clear  that  either  nature 
or  society  can  furnish  the  ultimate  and  complete  ground  of 
moral  sanctions ;  nor  does  it  explain  precisely  how  they  can 
serve  as  an  ultimate  ground  at  all.  It  is  in  the  endeavor  to 
clear  up  the  origin  of  that  right  to  command  which  all  the  moral 
standards  —  however  historically  derived  —  seem  to  claim, 
that  the  course  of  reflective  thinking  leads  the  mind  again  to 
the  identification  of  the  ground  of  morality  with  the  World- 
Ground.     Let  us  consider  the  argument  as  briefly  stated. 


616  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

With  regard  to  Nature,  considered  merely  as  a  complex  of 
more  or  less  coherent  "  cosmic  processes,"  one  can  really  find 
no  rational  account  for  any  sanction  attaching  itself  to  her 
so-called  "  laws."  That  some  at  least  of  these  processes  dom- 
inate man  and  determine  his  weal  and  his  woe  —  will-he  or 
nill-he  —  is  undoubtedly  matter-of-fact.  This  matter-of-fact 
lies  at  the  basis  of  all  his  moral  life  and  development  just  as 
it  forms  the  indestructible  basis  of  his  very  existence.  In 
certain  other  cases,  not  a  few  in  number  or  unimportant  but 
always  of  a  restricted  character,  man  can  say  whether  or  not  he 
will  act  in  obedience  with  nature's  laws ;  he  can  take  the  con- 
sequences of  disobedience,  if  he  cannot,  as  not  infrequently 
happens,  mitigate  these  consequences  by  action  that  falls 
under  other  natural  laws.  In  still  other  cases,  his  moral 
development  depends  largely  upon  improving  Nature's  un- 
restricted ways  of  behavior,  and  so,  by  natural  forces,  helping 
himself  to  a  better  estate  than  nature,  without  this  self-help, 
would  ever  furnish  to  him. 

All  such  human  intercourse  with  natural  forces  and  natural 
laws  belongs,  however,  to  the  domain  of  the  actual.  So  it 
is :  Nature  encompasses  me,  hems  me  in,  assists  me  at  times 
and  thwarts  and  punishes  me  at  others.  I  must  obey  her 
laws,  because  without  this  I  cannot  even  exist,  much  less 
attain  any  of  my  ends  or  enjoy  any  of  her  privileges.  But 
suppose  that  She,  or  some  moralist  who  has  come  over  from 
physics  into  ethics,  speaking  in  her  name,  attempts  to  add 
the  sanction  of  an  "  ought "  to  any  one  of  her  many  ways  of 
treating  human  kind.  Suppose  that  the  endeavor  is  made  to 
impress  the  individual  man  with  the  ethical  sacredness,  the 
truly  obligatory  character,  of  any  of  the  so-called  natural 
laws.  It  is  proposed  to  put  an  obligation  upon  man's  ethical 
nature  to  do  as  the  cosmic  processes  compel  or  solicit  him  to 
do.  The  voice  that  issues  from  this  mysterious  mother  of  us 
all  is  now  no  longer  "  Thou  must,"  or  "  Thou  shalt,"  in  order 
to  this  or  that  end,  and  in  view  of  these  favorable  or  unfavor- 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  617 

able  consequences ;  her  voice  now  is,  "  Thou  oughtest,"  and 
''  so  only  wilt  thou  secure  the  satisfactions  of  an  approving  con- 
science." But  what  right  to  command  —  right,  such  as  belongs 
to  the  very  idea  of  an  ethical  sanction  —  can  be  conceived  of  in 
the  name  of  a  purely  cosmic  or  natural  process  ?  Suppose 
that  I  choose  to  disobey  nature ;  you  may  threaten  me  with 
impersonal  cosmic  processes,  but  you  cannot  appeal  in  their 
name  to  my  feeling  of  obligation.  The  ruling  natural  forces 
may  grind  me  to  powder,  but  they  shall  not  make  me  bow 
before  their  right  to  command.  The  laws  of  nature  may 
compel  my  obedience,  but  they  cannot  compel  a  moral  respect 
for  themselves.  By  the  appeal  itself,  "  Holy  mother  Nature  " 
is  already  transformed  from  an  impersonal  source  of  cosmic 
processes  into  a  personal  and  Ethical  Spirit,  in  order  that  she 
may  serve  the  better  as  a  sort  of  World-Ground.  This  is  really 
only  another  way  of  bringing  in  covertly  the  postulate  of  God 
as  the  ground  of  morality. 

As  the  moral  development  of  man  proceeds,  accompanied 
as  it  necessarily  is  by  his  intellectual  progress,  the  conscious 
worth  of  man's  nature  superior  to  the  sum-total  of  the  under- 
lying cosmic  processes,  becomes  more  and  more  obvious  to 
himself.  From  the  very  beginning,  indeed,  he  finds  much  in 
those  processes  which  is  neither  to  his  mind  nor  in  accord- 
ance with  his  dawning  and  ascending  sense  of  what  is  just 
and  wise  and  kind.  The  schism  between  the  natural  and  the 
ethical  tends  to  become  more  apparent.  The  struggle  with 
these  natural  forces  and  laws  into  which  man's  ethical  nature 
impels  him  becomes  more  intense  and  more  oppressive. 
His  moral  consciousness  comes  to  assume  the  right  of 
moral  judgment  over  these  very  "  cosmic  processes  ; "  and,  as 
in  Professor  Huxley's  extreme  case,  it  accuses  them  of  the 
breach  of  all  those  proprieties  and  obligations  under  the 
sanction  of  which  man's  moral  development  flourishes  best. 
A  saner  and  profounder  view  of  Nature  follows,  in  our 
judgment,  upon  taking  a  higher  point  of  view  ;  but  this  is 


618  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

true  only  if  one  confess  that  the  cosmic  processes  themselves 
issue  from  the  same  personal  and  spiritual  source  as  that 
to  which,  in  the  last  resort,  must  be  attributed  the  moral 
nature  and  moral  development  of  man.  Certain  it  is  that, 
without  some  such  way  of  unifying  the  explanation  of  all 
man's  experience,  the  schism  between  his  moral  life  and 
the  existence,  action,  and  evolution  of  physical  forces  and 
laws  is  certain  to  go  on  widening  and  deepening  to  the  end. 
Accept  such  an  explanation,  however,  and  it  at  once  be- 
comes apparent  that  —  if  not  wholly  how  —  the  quasi-ohWgdi- 
tory  character  of  natural  law  is  due  to  this :  The  source  of 
this  law  and  of  the  human  consciousness  which  endows  it 
with  sanctions  is  to  be  found  in  the  same  World-Ground. 
But  this  is  in  a  way  to  identify  Nature  with  the  ideally 
righteous  and  holy  Will  of  God. 

There  is  undoubtedly  more  reason  to  be  found  in  man's 
naive  moral  consciousness  for  asserting  the  right  of  society 
to  issue  morally  obligatory  commands  to  the  individual,  than 
can  be  discovered  in  the  nature  of  any  of  the  merely  cosmic 
processes,  or  in  any  of  man's  natural  relations  to  these  proc- 
esses. Such  is  the  very  constitution  of  society  that  certain 
of  its  members  inevitably  appeal  to  the  multitude  of  men 
with  a  sort  of  sanction  for  their  claim  to  authority  and 
allegiance,  in  matters  of  conduct.  In  the  family,  this  is  true 
of  the  relations  between  parents  and  children,  during  all 
the  earlier  development  of  the  latter;  true  also  of  certain 
of  the  relations  which  exist  between  husband  and  wife.  In 
the  tribal  relations  also,  the  chiefs,  or  head-men  of  the  tribe, 
its  leaders  in  war,  its  wise  men  in  council,  and  its  teachers 
and  priests  who  carry  on  the  religious  functions  of  the 
community,  are  naturally  clothed  with  an  authority  which 
appears  to  be  of  no  merely  external  sort.  The  moral  con- 
sciousness of  the  inferior  multitude  of  the  tribe  acknowledges 
the  commands  or  injunctions  of  the  superior  few  as  reason- 
ably acquiring  the  obligation  of  a  spiritual  and  ethical  bond. 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  619 

Mere  fear  of  force,  unmixed  dread  of  physical  consequences 
or  desire  for  the  pleasant  rewards  of  obedience,  can  in  no 
case  account  for  all  the  strength  of  the  tie  which  binds  men 
together ;  — even  in  these  simplest  forms  of  social  organization, 
or  in  the  lowest  stages  of  their  moral  and  rational  develop- 
ment. What  is  true  of  the  simplest  forms  and  the  lowest 
stages  is  pre-eminently  true  of  the  more  complex  forms  and 
higher  stages  of  the  ethical  development  of  humanity.  In 
these  higher  developments,  the  will  and  ethical  judgment  of 
the  social  organization  have  expressed  themselves  in  a  great 
variety  of  customs,  precepts,  laws,  and  regulations,  all  of 
which  are  themselves  the  resultants  of  a  long  process  of 
historical  development.  In  other  words,  we  find  the  individual 
Moral  Self  everywhere,  within  certain  limits,  acknowledging 
the  sacred  and  obligatory  character  of  the  customs  and  laws 
which  express  the  moral  development  of  the  community 
of  Moral  Selves.  Thus  do  the  historical  and  social  processes, 
in  which  the  moral  life  of  humanity  manifests  itself,  seem 
to  stand  in  a  relation  to  the  sanctions  of  morality  which  is 
much  superior  to  anything  that  can  be  claimed  for  what 
Professor  Huxley  denominates  the  "  cosmic  processes." 

If  now  inquiry  be  made  into  the  reason  why  the  ethical 
judgments  and  choices  of  the  various  forms  of  social  organir 
zation  appear,  under  ordinary  circumstances,  to  carry  with 
them  their  own  indisputable  sanctions,  the  answer  must 
undoubtedly  be  found  in  the  very  constitution  of  man,  and 
in  the  nature  of  the  social  organizations  which  he  constructs. 
To  draw  out  this  argument  in  detail  would  only  take  us 
again  over  the  same  ground  which  we  have  already  covered 
in  considering  the  nature  of  the  Moral  Self,  and  the  doctrine 
of  the  Virtuous  Life,  its  character,  and  its  aims.  Man  is,  in 
fact,  so  built  that  he  respects  his  own  building.  Because  of 
this  mysterious  inherent  dominance  of  the  feeling  of  obliga- 
tion, the  judgment  and  practices  which  have,  for  various 
reasons,  come  more  or  less  continuously   and   persistently 


620  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

to  call  forth  the  feeling,  appear  to  the  subject  of  that  feeling 
as  having  an  inviolable  authority.  In  one  word,  the  sanctions 
of  the  prevalent  standards  of  conduct  have  their  origin  and 
their  explanation  in  the  same  sources  as  those  in  which  these 
standards  themselves  originate. 

Let  no  inquirer,  however,  be  deceived  by  the  appearance  of 
lucidity  and  finality  which  all  such  explanations  as  the  fore- 
going may  be  tempted  to  assume.  For  this  circle  in  argu- 
ment, however  interesting  and  able  to  illuminate  its  own 
complete  circumference,  or  even  its  own  entire  area,  never- 
theless still  leaves  unsolved  the  same  problem  in  the  meta- 
physics of  ethics.  It  is  the  historical  behavior  of  the  race  in 
its  construction  and  acknowledgment  of  these  very  same 
moral  sanctions  for  which  a  more  fundamental  and  ultimate 
explanation  is  sought.  Just  as  the  ministration  of  the  cosmic 
processes  to  the  moral  development  of  man  does  not  seem 
to  be  satisfactorily  accounted  for  when  it  is  referred  to  Nature, 
conceived  of  as  a  complex  of  blind  forces  devoid  of  all  Spirit 
and  conscious  Life,  so  does  the  work  of  so-called  human  society, 
in  creating  and  sanctifying  those  bonds  which  are  in  their 
very  character  spiritual  and  personal,  appear  unequal  to  that 
of  a  self-existent  and  self-explaining  Absolute. 

And,  indeed,  there  are  other  ethical  phenomena  which  are 
current  and  indisputable,  but  which  are  of  a  startlingly 
different  character.  For  sacred  and  full  of  self-consistent 
sanctions  as  much  of  social  morality  may  seem  to  be,  there 
has  always  existed  in  the  human  breast  a  strong  and  some- 
times irresistible  and  outbreaking  tendency  to  overleap  the 
regard  for  all  such  sanctions.  The  great  moral  reformers 
and  prophets  of  humanity  have  always  felt  this,  and  have 
acted  according  to  the  feeling.  Call  a  crime  if  you  will  this 
revolt  against  the  current  social  morality ;  and  perhaps 
society  is  compelled  thus  to  designate  and  to  punish  every 
such  revolt.  But  the  fact  is  that  the  most  enlightened  and 
pure-minded  individuals  have  never  been  willing  uncondition- 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  621 

ally  to  submit  their  moral  consciousness  to  the  most  highly 
sanctioned  external  regulations,  however  enacted  and  enforced 
by  the  social  organization.  In  studying  the  phenomena  of 
man's  moral  development  in  a  large  way,  attention  is  con- 
stantly called  to  this  interesting  and  startling  fact.  Other 
sanctions,  and  another  more  spiritual  and  mysterious  source 
of  authority,  have  always  been  appealed  to  in  critical  mo- 
ments by  the  morally  most  advanced  members  of  society 
itself.  Nor  do  I  think  that  any  reasonable  critic  of  man's 
moral  life  would  be  satisfied  with  finding  no  higher  and  more 
final  sanctions  to  which  an  appeal  may  be  taken  than  those 
that  belong  to  the  actually  existing  mandates  enforced  by  the 
customs  of  the  social  organization. 

I  should  understate  the  case  so  greatly  as  quite  completely 
to  misrepresent  it  if  I  left  this  subject  with  the  impression 
that  we  are  here  dealing  only  with  a  rare  phenomenon,  or 
one  that  may  be  accredited  to  the  class  of  ethical  eccentrici- 
ties. On  the  contrary,  it  has  always  been  true  that  a  pos- 
sible distinction,  usually  lying  latent  perhaps,  and  yet  always 
ready  to  emerge,  exists  in  the  moral  consciousness  of  the 
race,  between  the  sanctions  which  the  will  of  man  imparts  to 
the  moral  law  and  the  sanctions  to  which  an  appeal  may 
sometimes,  at  least,  be  made  as  though  they  belonged  to  the 
moral  law  itself.  I  know  that  there  is  much  about  such 
human  experience  which  is  vague  and  shadowy.  I  confess 
that  it  is  difficult  to  take  the  fact  out  of  the  figurative  and 
symbolical  character  with  which  it  is  clothed  in  human  expe- 
rience, and  then  reconstruct  it  in  such  a  way  as  to  give  it  the 
force  of  a  convincing  argument.  But  the  fact  is  there ;  it 
cannot  properly  be  overlooked ;  its  import  is  sometimes  most 
astounding.  Very  timid  animals,  when  driven  and  cornered, 
will  sometimes  fight  most  desperately.  Very  subservient 
multitudes  of  men,  after  long  years  of  suppression  under  the 
dominance  of  forces  of  social  organization  that  have  every 
claim  to  moral  sacredness  which  society  itself  can  impart, 


622  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

sometimes  appeal,  regardless  of  results,  to  another  than  the 
human  social  tribunal.  The  appeal  is  generally  dim-sighted 
or  blind.  Seldom,  or  never,  do  these  multitudes  clearly  know 
what  they  are  about.  Rarely,  if  ever,  do  they  succeed  in 
escaping  from  the  infliction  upon  themselves  of  evils  more 
grievous  than  those  which  they  endeavor  to  abate.  But  in 
some  dim-sighted  or  blind  way  they  hold  the  indestructible 
confidence  that  there  is  a  justice  superior  to  all  human  jus- 
tice ;  that  there  is  a  court  of  appeal  to  which  the  individual 
may  resort  when  the  last  earthly  court  of  appeal  has  given 
its  sanctions  to  essential  wrong-doing ;  in  fine,  that  the  moral 
law  is  above  all  the  human  laws  which  enact  what  shall  be 
esteemed  moral ;  and  that  its  sanctions  are  so  deeply  founded 
in  the  bedrock  of  Reality  as  never  to  be  shaken,  even  when 
all  human  institutions  of  the  most  time-honored  and  sacred 
order  seem  tottering  to  their  final  fall. 

It  is  not,  however,  in  this  quasi-nihilistic  or  revolutionary 
fashion  alone  that  the  moral  consciousness  of  man  seeks 
satisfaction  in  the  confidence  that  the  Ground  of  the  World 
itself  is  the  source  and  ground  for  the  sanctions  of  morality. 
There  have  always  been  many  quiet  workmen  who  have  held 
this  confidence  in  less  obtrusive  and  disturbing  ways.  More 
or  less  habitually  these  persons  have  been  able  to  do  right, 
and  to  enjoy  the  sanctions  of  an  approving  conscience,  even 
when  the  "  doing  right "  brought  them  into  disesteem  as 
wrong-doers  among  those  of  their  fellows  whose  standards  of 
moral  judgment  were  of  the  more  conventional  sort.  That 
some  of  these  workmen  have  displayed  a  somewhat  immoral 
spirit  of  contempt  and  bitterness  toward  conventional  mor- 
ality and  toward  its  sanctions  must  be  confessed ;  it  is  to  be 
deplored  undoubtedly.  The  disposition  to  let  society  "go- 
hang,"  as  it  not  infrequently  deserves  to  do,  is  never  lovely 
or  morally  to  be  approbated.  But  the  testimony  of  the  men 
who,  whether  indulging  this  spirit  or  keeping  themselves  free 
from  it,  have  cherished  that  respect  for  morality  which  is  not 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  623 

founded  merely  in  respect  for  the  enactments,  practices,  and 
opinions  of  the  social  organization,  is,  it  seems  to  me,  a  valid 
argument  for  the  identification  of  the  ground  of  the  sanctions 
of  morality  with  the  World-Ground. 

Nor  should  one  fail  to  notice  another  cognate  class  of 
related  phenomena.  Not  simply  in  times  of  open  and  violent 
revolt  against  the  prevalent  moral  order,  but  in  their  daily 
moral  judgments  multitudes  of  men  frequently  exhibit  their 
confidence  in  God  as  the  source  and  sanctioner  of  a  more 
ripe  and  essential  justice  than  that  which  society  approbates, 
—  not  to  say  practises  and  enforces.  This  they  often  do  in 
querulous  ways.  And  among  such  complainers  the  most 
pronounced  skeptics  as  to  the  Being  of  God,  the  Ethical 
Spirit,  are  not  infrequently  most  prominent.  Things  have  not 
gone  right  with  them ;  society  has  not  dealt  fairly  with  them. 
And  yet  things  have  gone  on  steadily  treating  them  with  that 
indifference  to  merely  personal  considerations  which  belongs 
to  the  very  nature  of  things.  Society  has  quite  uniformly 
given  them  just  the  same  chance  for  success  which  others 
have  had ;  and  neither  the  social  customs,  nor  the  courts  of 
law,  nor  the  popular  opinions  and  judgments,  have  ever 
brought  any  peculiar  hardship  upon  them.  They  who  least  of 
all  believe  that  there  is  any  Providence  are  often  most  bitter 
in  the  judgment  of  the  behavior  of  Providence  toward  them- 
selves. They  who  do  not  credit  any  existing  ground  for  the 
sanctions  of  morality  above  or  beyond  the  cosmic  processes, 
or  the  enactments  of  society,  are  frequently  most  dissatisfied 
with  the  character  and  working  of  these  sanctions.  To  claim 
their  respect,  things  and  society  "  ought  to  do  better ; "  be- 
cause things  and  society  are  somehow  not  up  to  the  standard 
to  which  they  ought  to  rise  !  Surely  one  may  call  out  with 
Schopenhauer,  "  Wooden  iron,"  when  one  hears  from  such 
lips  about  what  that  is  not,  really  ought  to  be.  Or  the  rather, 
may  one  say  in  the  words  of  the  Apostle  Paul :  "  Whom 
therefore  ye  ignorantly  worship,  him  declare  I  unto  you."     In 


624  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

contrast  with  this  multitude  stands  the  multitude  of  pious 
souls  who  quietly  and  faithfully  trust  God,  the  Ethical  Spirit, 
as  the  original  source  and  final  sanctioner  of  all  morally  right 
conduct.  By  the  standard  of  his  mandates  they  constantly 
test,  as  best  they  can,  all  the  most  sacred  standards  both  of 
the  natural  and  the  social  sort. 

By  these  and  many  similar  experiences  it  may  be  shown 
that  there  is  a  necessity  laid  upon  reflective  thinking  to  find 
somewhere  back  of,  and  beyond,  man's  moral  constitution  and 
the  historical  evolution  of  his  moral  life  the  ground  for  the 
sanctions  which  he  recognizes  as  essential  to  all  morality. 
Collective  humanity,  in  and  through  a  historical  process, 
gives  itself  the  moral  law.  And  yet  humanity  gives  itself  the 
law,  because  humanity  itself  is  constituted  a  child  of  that 
Ethical  Spirit  in  whom  are  all  the  sources  of  its  own  moral 
life  and  moral  development.  Man  recognizes  the  inviolable 
authority  and  indisputable  sanctions  of  morality,  because  he 
is  himself  an  ethical  and  social  Self ;  and  thus  is  empowered 
and  compelled  to  respect  his  own  moral  constructions.  But 
just  as  he  is  not  the  author  of  his  own  physical  being  and 
physical  development,  but  perpetually  derives  this  from  the 
World-Ground,  whose  life  and  vital  energy  are  immanent 
in  the  race,  so  is  he  not  the  author,  in  the  last  analysis,  of 
the  authority  and  the  sanctions  which  his  Moral  Selfhood 
acknowledges. 

I  believe,  then,  that  no  satisfactory  account  is  possible  for 
the  reflective  and  speculative  treatment  of  the  sanctions  of 
human  moral  life  which  does  not  find  the  ground  of  these 
sanctions  in  the  World-Ground.  If  they  originate,  as  they 
certainly  do,  in  the  ethical  reactions  of  man  himself  upon  his 
own  physical  and  social  environment,  still  this  very  proce- 
dure of  man  must  find  its  explanation  in  our  theory  of  reality. 
Both  the  environment  —  social  as  well  as  physical  —  and  the 
constructive  work  of  man  in  his  own  ethical  evolution  must 
be  referred  for  their  more  ultimate  explanation  to  the  Per- 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  625 

sonal  Absolute.  In  order  that  this  Absolute  may  serve  as  an 
explanatory  principle  of  such  a  complex  evolution  —  namely, 
of  the  development  of  man's  confidence  in,  and  respect  for, 
the  sanctions  of  morality  it  must  be  conceived  of  in  terms 
of  Ethical  Spirit.  The  ultimate  Ground  of  moral  sanctions 
cannot  be  hare  Will,  or  hlind  Will,  or  Will  indifferent  to 
all  the  Ethical  as  well  as  sentient  and  aesthetical  interests 
of  humanity.  The  rather  is  it  an  omnipotent  and  omni- 
present energy  devoted  to  the  final  securing  in  reality  of 
those  interests.  In  other  words,  the  ultimate  sanctions  of 
morality  must  be  located  in  the  authority  of  an  ideally 
righteous  and  holy  Will  that  is  realizing  its  own  Ideas  in 
the  historical  process  of  human  moral  development, 

Such  a  conception  as  that  just  expressed  imparts  rational- 
ity to  the  sanctions  of  morality.  When  the  demand  is  made 
that  I,  the  individual  person,  shall  sacrifice  my  immediate  or 
more  distant  sentient  good  in  the  interests  of  the  common 
good,  an  underlying  substantial  Ground  seems  necessary  in 
order  to  justify  the  obligatory  character  of  such  a  demand. 
All  through  the  previous  treatment  given  to  the  problem  of 
conduct,  transcendental  references  have  been  implied  to  a 
Personal  Bond  among  the  individuals  whose  life  in  social 
relations  affords  the  content  of  morality.  One  may  not  be 
ready  to  accept  the  claim  that  no  sanctions  for  an  altruistic 
ethics  —  i.  e.  for  genuine  morality  at  all  —  are  tenable  which 
do  not  found  themselves  in  belief  in  God,  and  in  the  oneness 
of  all  finite  souls  in  God.^  "  All  persons  are  mutually  exclusive 
...  yet  they  are  one  in  God.  Hence  the  Good  for  the  whole 
is  the  Good  for  every  separate  member."  But  if  such  a  form 
of  stating  the  truth  seems  somewhat  too  abstract  and  other- 
worldly, this  is  no  legitimate  reason  for  overlooking  tlie  plain 
facts  in  the  case,  or  for  refusing  to  face  the  mysterious  and 
profound  problem  which  the  attempt  to  explain  the  facts  pre- 
sents.    In  some  dumb  and  inchoate  fashion  the   universal 

1  As  made  by  T.  H.  Green,  and  compare  D'Arcy,  Short  Study  of  Ethics,  p.  102. 

40 


626  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

moral  consciousness  makes  confession  to  the  belief  that  men 
—  the  wise  and  the  ignorant,  the  superior  and  the  inferior 
individuals  and  races  —  are  bound  to  acknowledge  the  author- 
ity over  them  all  alike,  of  a  moral  government  which  is  only 
faintly  and  imperfectly  typified  and  realized  in  the  sanctions 
which  they  confer  upon  the  mandates  of  their  own  devising. 
And  this  confession  points  the  finger  of  reason  in  the  direction 
of  this  truth :  The  ultimate  Source  and  Guarantor  of  all 
moral  sanctions  is  that  Ethical  Spirit  to  whom  all  men  thus, 
more  or  less  unwittingly,  confess  that  their  allegiance  is  due. 
Pre-eminently  true,  however,  is  it  that  the  moral  Ideals  of 
humanity  must  find  their  explanation  in  the  Being  of  the 
World-Ground.  And  this  they  cannot  do  unless  this  World- 
Ground  be  conceived  of  as  Itself  an  Ethical  Spirit,  the  One 
Ideal-Real  of  a  righteous  and  holy  rational  Will.  As  a 
modern  writer  has  said  :  ^  "  The  moral  World-order  regarded 
as  an  active  Principle  is  God  as  Spirit.  Only  the  Self,  only 
Egohood,  is  the  home  of  all  that  is  Ideal."  In  human 
morality,  its  life  and  its  development,  the  presence  and  influ- 
ence of  ideals  is  the  greatest  and  most  mysterious  of  experi- 
enced facts.  Man  is,  indeed,  an  idealizing  energy.  His  dis- 
satisfaction with  his  physical  and  intellectual  conditions  and 
attainments  is  a  mighty  potency  for  accomplishing  the  im- 
provement of  these  conditions,  the  enlargement  of  these 
attainments.  In  all  stages  of  his  development,  at  least  above 
the  very  lowest,  he  forms  a  picture  of  something  better  than 
the  actuality  and  makes  more  or  less  strenuous  and  determined 
efforts  to  realize  it.  This  ceaseless  reaching  out  beyond  the 
domain  of  his  present  possessions  to  grasp  after  imagined 
goods  characterizes  the  course  of  humanity  in  its  upward 
history.  It  is,  however,  in  the  ethical  sphere  of  his  living 
and  acting  that  the  influence  of  man's  idealizing  potency  is 
most  mysterious  and  profoundly  significant.  He  is  indeed  a 
poor  specimen  of  human  nature  who  has  no  ideal  of  a  Moral 
1  Moriz  Carriere,  Die  sittliche  Weltordnung,  p.  405. 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  627 

Self  in  any  respect  or  degree  better  than  his  own  actual  attain- 
ments; who  esteems  himself  in  all  respects  as  largely  and 
comprehensively  virtuous  as  is  necessary  to  satisfy  his  own 
conceptions  of  what  he  ought  to  be.  I  am  not  now  referring 
to  the  theological  doctrine  of  the  consciousness  of  moral  im- 
perfection as  a  consciousness  of  sin.  But,  in  fact,  man  is 
naturally  determined  to  compare  the  facts  of  the  moral  life 
of  himself  and  of  other  men  with  a  standard  which  is  set 
higher  than  the  reaches  of  that  life  itself. 

In  a  still  larger  way  are  men  found  picturing  to  themselves  a 
social  status  which  is  an  improvement  morally  over  any  exist- 
ing social  organization,  and  then  acknowledging,  however 
feebly,  the  moral  obligation  to  move  onward  toward  the  real- 
ization of  this  Ideal.  Thus  it  is  only  a  seeming  contradiction 
in  terms  when  I  assert :  the  moral  Ideal  is  the  great,  myste- 
rious, and  permanent  Reality  in  the  moral  constitution  and 
moral  development  of  humanity.  This  same  Ideal  assumes 
almost  innumerable  forms  as  it  appears  before  the  individual 
consciousness  and  as  it  changes  its  character  in  the  different 
ethical  epochs  and  stages  of  the  ethical  evolution  of  man. 
Sometimes  it  is  rather  an  allurement ;  sometimes  it  partakes 
more  of  the  nature  of  a  torment  —  the  allurement  or  the  tor- 
ment of  the  Infinite  appearing  within  the  consciousness  of  the 
finite.  Always,  as  was  clearly  seen  when  the  subject  was 
under  consideration,  the  moral  Ideal  is  itself  undergoing  a 
process  of  development.  Its  very  ideal  character  shows 
itself  in  this  that,  the  more  it  is  pursued,  the  more  does  it 
retreat ;  the  more  nearly  it  seems  to  have  been  reached,  the 
more  distant  of  realization  does  it  become. 

Now,  undoubtedly,  it  is  in  the  nature  of  man's  moral  and 
social  Selfhood  that  one  must  discover  the  proximate  account 
for  the  origin  of  his  moral  ideals.  Just  as  man  makes  his 
own  moral  laws,  and  imparts  to  them  the  sanctions  before 
whose  holy  inviolability  he  acknowledges  his  allegiance  to  be 
due,  so  does  he  frame  the  ideals  of  individual  goodness  and 


628  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

of  the  morally  perfect  human  society  which  the  keeping  of 
these  laws  is  supposed  progressively  to  secure.  How  he  can 
achieve  with  any  measure  of  success  so  important  a  task  the 
psychology  of  the  Moral  Self  attempts  to  describe.  Thus,  too, 
does  the  historical  and  anthropological  study  of  the  influences 
under  which  the  different  types  of  the  Virtuous  Life  have 
appeared  supply  the  proximate  causes  for  the  structure  and 
growth  of  the  Ultimate  Moral  Ideal.  Yet  here  again  the 
answer  of  psychological  analysis  and  of  historical  insight  does 
not  furnish  all  that  the  philosophy  of  conduct  demands. 
How  can  man  do  for  himself  this  significant  work  of  idealiz- 
ing, unless  his  nature  is  born  of  an  Absolute  Ethical  Spirit  ? 
How  can  he  develop  such  an  Ideal,  in  whose  life  he  shares, 
unless  his  history  may  be  understood  from  the  side  of  the 
"  Overman "  as  under  the  inspiration  and  guidance  of  this 
Spirit  ?  It  is  in  the  answer  to  these  inquiries  that  the  meta- 
physics of  Ethics  finds  itself  obliged  to  adopt  some  position 
corresponding  to  that  from  which  religion  regards  all  the 
development  of  humanity.  Of  this  tenet  of  the  religious  con- 
sciousness Pfleiderer  ^  forcefully  says :  "  And  here  too  Paul 
pointed  out  the  right  way,  founding  his  philosophy  of  religion 
on  the  thought  which  in  modern  thinking  must  always  be 
the  principal  point  of  view :  the  thought,  namely,  of  a  develop- 
ment of  the  moral  spirit  under  the  guiding  education  of  God. 
Each  stage  of  the  development  has  its  corresponding  moral 
ideal ;  none  of  them  is  fortuitous  or  arbitrary,  each  rests  on  a 
divine  ordinance  and  is  good  and  necessary  for  its  own  time, 
and  for  its  own  time  only." 

In  one  word,  if  man's  moral  nature  and  moral  develop- 
ment are  held  in  themselves  to  furnish  the  account  for  the 
origin  and  development  of  man's  moral  ideals,  then  a  fortiori 
is  it  man  himself,  with  this  nature  and  undergoing  this  de- 
velopment, who  demands  to  have  an  account  of  his  origin 
and  his  history.  In  his  efforts  to  introduce  in  the  form  of 
1  The  PhUosophy  of  Religion,  IV,  p.  254. 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  629 

ethical  postulates  all  those  most  precious  ethico-religious 
conceptions  and  truths  which  had  been  denied  to  knowledge, 
Kant  found  himself  compelled  to  draw  heavily  upon  the 
resources  of  an  invisible,  non-sensuous,  and  ideal  World. 
Knowledge  had  been  proved,  he  thought,  to  be  only  of  phenom- 
ena —  albeit  of  "  objective  "  phenomena,  and  so  of  phenomenal 
reality.  But  the  moral  law,  which  appears  in  human  con- 
sciousness as  a  categorical  imperative,  demands  that  we  should 
not  only  think  the  possibility  of  our  being,  but  believe  that 
we  actually  are,  free  and  noumenal  beings,  belonging  to  this 
kingdom  of  persons  where  moral  values,  however  unrealizable 
in  the  world  of  phenomena,  are  unconditional  and  supreme. 
This  is  Kant's  uncouth  way  of  acknowledging  that  man's 
moral  being,  however  its  historical  unfolding  and  psychologi- 
cal explanation  may  appear  to  the  understanding,  is,  after  all, 
dependently  connected  in  reality  with  the  World-Ground. 
For  this  great  thinker,  in  order  to  make  rational  our  expe- 
rience with  this  ideal  side  of  human  selfhood  and  human 
history,  God  must  be  believed  in  as  the  Lawgiver,  the  Sanc- 
tioner,  and  Rewarder  of  the  moral  life  of  humanity. 

In  accounting  for  the  nature  of  cognition  —  of  knowledge, 
faith,  feeling,  opinion,  etc.  —  we  are  obliged  to  differ  from 
the  author  of  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  in  many  and  rad- 
ical ways.  In  our  treatment  of  the  nature  of  moral  conscious- 
ness, too,  we  have  tried  to  keep  much  nearer  to  life  and  to 
experience  than  did  he  ;  and  so  to  be  more  truly  rational  than 
was  Kant  with  his  quite  too  vacillating  and  expansive  con- 
ception of  reason  itself.  In  this  way  we  expect  to  avoid  the 
deep-cutting  schism,  the  irreconcilable  contradiction,  which  he 
sets  up  within  the  heart  of  reason  itself.  There  are,  in  fact, 
no  such  contradictions  within  the  realm  of  appearances,  or  be- 
tween appearances  and  Reality,  as  the  Kantian  dialectic  aims 
to  disclose,  whether  this  dialectic  be  wielded  in  the  hands  of 
its  great  master  or  in  the  far  feebler  grasp  of  some  of  his  suc- 
cessors and  imitators.     But  the  final  necessities  which  all  the 


630  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

agnostic  dialecticians  come  to  acknowledge  are  most  signifi- 
cant. In  man's  moral  nature,  if  not  elsewhere  (although, 
as  I  believe,  also  elsewhere  and  everywhere),  the  voice  of  the 
Personal  Absolute  is  more  plainly  to  be  heard.  Faith  in  this 
voice  is  imperative  here.  Faith  in  this  voice  is  the  height 
of  rationality  here.  The  account  of  the  origin  and  the  on- 
going of  the  physical  universe  may  seem  complete  without 
the  recognition  of  a  Spirit  whose  self-conscious  Life  is  the 
source  and  the  inspiration  of  an  otherwise  dead  and  even  non- 
existent nature ;  the  account,  I  say,  may  seem  complete,  espe- 
cially if  the  inquirer  does  not  inquire  too  profoundly,  and  if 
he  is  content  to  deceive  himself  with  words  that  either  pos- 
sess no  real  content  of  thought  or  else  do  service  for  thoughts 
which  they  do  not  legitimately  represent.  But  for  the  origin 
and  the  historical  development  of  man's  ethical  and  spiritual 
life  —  with  its  laws  that  transcend  all  experience  of  conse- 
quences, its  sanctions  that  evoke  a  devotion  which  oversteps 
all  the  bounds  of  a  merely  personal  regard,  its  ideals  that  are 
ever  arising  and  fading,  but  only  to  appear  more  bright  and 
alluring  and  inspiring  still  —  what  account  can  possibly  be 
found  in  impersonal  cosmic  processes,  or  in  a  World-Ground 
that  is  not  itself  an  ethical  and  spiritual  Life  ? 

And,  finally,  with  the  adoption  of  the  postulate  that  the 
ground  of  morality  is  to  be  found  in  the  World-Ground  con- 
ceived of  as  Ethical  Spirit,  the  theoretical  and  practical  an- 
titheses with  which  the  psychological  and  historical  study  of 
ethical  phenomena  left  our  minds  embarrassed,  are  much 
softened  and  relieved,  if  they  are  not  wholly  removed.  That 
they  are  not  wholly  removed  must  be  frankly  admitted.  The 
virtuous  life  is  still  a  problem  and  a  conflict  for  the  truly  reli- 
gious man.  It  is  not  the  reward  of  religious  faith  to  deliver 
the  soul  from  all  the  puzzling  conflicts  of  thought,  or  even  the 
manifold  conflicts  of  a  practical  sort.  But  both  reason  and 
will,  both  the  speculative  demands  and  the  necessities  of  clear- 
sighted action,  are  in  a  measure  —  and  in  increasingly  good 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  631 

measure,  as  acquaintance  with  the  ethical  problem  increases 
in  width  and  in  depth  — satisfied  by  the  view  which  finds  the 
ground  of  morality  in  an  ethical  and  spiritual  World-Ground. 
Among  the  theoretical  and  practical  antitheses  in  which 
we  were  left  by  the  empirical  study  of  the  Moral  Self  and  of 
the  Virtuous  Life  was  the  conflict  which  exists  between  the 
interests  of  the  sentient  and  the  commands  of  the  moral  being 
of  man.  Naturally  and  inevitably  the  sentient  nature  demands 
satisfaction ;  but  many  of  its  most  imperative  and  fundamen- 
tal satisfactions  are  either  quite  constantly  or  more  infrequently 
restricted,  or  even  forbidden,  by  the  moral  law.  Theoretically 
considered  this  conflict  is  often  inscrutable ;  and  from  the 
practical  point  of  view,  it  is  generally  annoying  and  difficult  of 
a  reasonable  settlement.  It  is  not  my  purpose  at  present  to 
sing  the  praises  of  those  consolations,  and  even  reversals  of 
the  natural  results  of  this  conflict,  which  are  afforded  by  reli- 
gious faith.  It  is  enough  here  briefly  to  say  that,  to  the 
thinker  who  refers  this  dual  and  antagonistic  nature  of  man 
to  its  source  in  an  ideally  righteous  and  holy  Will,  and  who 
regards  this  Will  as  pledged  and  empowered  to  see  the  finite 
Moral  Self  through  to  a  triumphant  issue  in  this  conflict,  — 
to  such  a  one  the  conflict  itself  assumes  a  quite  different  aspect. 
Suffering  in  the  interests  of  morality,  if  this  suffering  is 
caused  by  a  blind,  irrational,  and  hopeless  confusion  seated  in 
the  nature  of  an  impersonal  Universe,  is  hard  indeed  to 
justify.  Suffering,  in  the  interests  of  morality,  with  the 
added  confidence  that  in  the  suffering  we  are  showing  our 
allegiance  to  an  Ethical  Spirit,  whose  sympathy  we  may  claim 
and  to  whose  righteous  judgments  we  may  appeal,  is  not 
nearly  so  hard.  The  most  refined  arguments  of  Naturalism 
in  Ethics  give,  I  think,  no  sort  of  intellectual  satisfaction, 
and  no  sufficient  semblance  even  of  a  support  to  the  man  who 
is  putting  down,  and  putting  behind  him,  his  lower  sensuous 
cravings  in  the  interests  of  the  moral  life  —  whether  his  own, 
or  that  of  his  fellow  men. 


632  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  conflicts  which  arise  among 
the  virtues  themselves.  As  we  have  already  seen  (p.  451  f.), 
the  different  virtues  seem  to  display  a  kind  of  antagonistic  or 
antithetic  character.  This  is  emphasized  in  the  classification 
which,  however,  we  refused  to  accept,  —  namely,  into  egoistic 
and  altruistic  virtues.  What  solution  offers  itself  when  my 
own  best  interests  seem  to  conflict  with  the  equally  good  and 
desirable  interests  of  others  ?  No  theoretical  answer  to  this 
problem  must,  indeed,  be  admitted  which  solves  the  problem  by 
dissolving  the  individual  personality,  with  its  definite  concrete 
interests,  in  the  vague  and  boundless  conception  of  an  all- 
embracing  Infinite.  The  "  oneness  of  man  in  God  "  has  not 
infrequently  been  so  taught  by  the  metaphysics  of  ethics  as  to 
frame  such  a  reason  for  doing  away  with  moral  conflicts  that 
the  reason  itself,  taken  seriously,  does  away  with  all  intelligible 
apprehension  of  the  nature  and  grounds  of  morality  itself.  I 
am  one  person,  —  in  my  moral  Selfhood  exclusive  of  all  other 
personality  and  individually  responsible  in  a  very  real  and 
significant  way.  My  morality  is  my  own  ;  there  is  no  reality 
answering  to  the  term  the  "  Social  Self ; "  but  the  morality 
of  the  Moral  Self  is  ever  an  individual  and  concrete  affair. 
The  moral  selfhood  of  every  human  being  is  peculiarly  lonely. 
And  a  pantheistic  metaphysics  of  ethics  which  either  removes 
the  attributes  of  good  and  bad  conduct  from  the  individual, 
or  which  merges  them  all  together  in  the  Universal,  is  above 
all  forms  of  this  branch  of  philosophy  most  to  be  avoided  and 
dreaded.  This  way  of  reconciling  moral  antitheses  cuts  moral- 
ity up  by  the  roots. 

None  the  less,  however,  is  it  necessary  to  emphasize  the 
social  nature  of  morality,  and  the  amelioration  which  all 
moral  conflicts  receive  from  the  religious  doctrine  of  the 
Fatherhood  of  God,  and  the  membership  in  the  Divine  family 
of  all  the  "  sons  of  men."  Religion  teaches  that  men  are  all 
born  of  one  Ethical  Spirit ;  the  sons  of  men  are  also  sons  of 
God.     From  this  point  of  view  the  hard  and  sharp  antithesis 


MORALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  633 

between  the  so-called  egoistic  and  the  so-called  altruistic 
duties  softens  and  seems  to  melt  quite  away.  If  I,  in  my 
conduct,  strive  to  conserve  and  promote  the  moral  interests 
of  my  better  Self;  —  this  I  do  as  one  of  the  members  of  the 
Divine  family  and  with  their  interests  as  truly  as  my  own  at 
heart.  If  in  this  interest  I  oppose  others  to  the  death  of  the 
body  and  to  the  destruction  of  all  the  material  interests  of 
myself  and  of  them,  provided  this  opposition  has  secured  the 
characteristics  of  wisdom,  truth,  and  benevolence  on  its  side, 
I  am  still  contending  for  their  most  worthy  life  as  well  as  for 
my  own.  And  in  all  this  devotion  to  others  —  to  consider 
the  individual's  conduct  from  the  other  and  reverse  point  of 
view  —  I  am  realizing  my  own  ideal  of  the  morally  most 
worthy  Self.  Thus  this  "  suffusion  of  vague  personality " 
which  has  everywhere  appeared  in  our  study  of  ethical 
phenomena  is  made  to  crystallize  into  a  definite  doctrine  of 
a  personal  Ground  for  all  these  phenomena.  The  distinction 
between  persons  is  not  abrogated ;  the  rather  is  it  em- 
phasized and  elevated. 

The  attempt  to  construe  the  World-Ground  in  a  so-called 
"scientific"  and  totally  impersonal  way  tends  always  to 
minimize  the  authority  and  value  of  personal  life.  A  bubble 
rising,  briefly  remaining,  and  then  soon  bursting  upon  the 
surface  of  Nature's  boundless  sea,  seems  scarcely  worth  the 
attention  which  the  study  of  the  Moral  Self  of  man,  and  of 
his  rising  moral  Ideals,  urges  us  to  bestow.  But  a  single 
child  of  God  may  sanely  be  held  to  have  no  mean  potential 
value.  And  to  believe  that  what  is  done  for  one  —  whether 
that  one  be  one's  self  or  some  other  one  —  is  somehow  done 
for  all,  and  that  the  Ethical  Spirit  in  whom  all  have  their 
life  and  being  is  the  Source  and  Guarantor  of  the  moral 
interests  of  all,  can  scarcely  fail  to  assist  in  both  the  theoreti- 
cal and  the  practical  solution  of  the  antithesis  between  the 
egoistic  and  the  altruistic  virtues  so  called. 

Especially,  however,  does  the  heart  of  man  crave  the  as- 


634  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

sistance  of  some  well-assured  hope  in  its  effort  to  bear 
dutifully  the  grave  contradictions  which  everywhere  exist 
between  the  actual  and  the  ethically  Ideal.  That  things  are 
not  as  they  ought  to  be  is  a  much  more  trying  discovery  than 
that  things  are  not  as  they  seem.  The  antithesis  between 
Appearance  and  Reality  which  has  been  so  often  exploited  in 
a  showily  dialectical  rather  than  in  a  profoundly  philosophical 
manner  is,  for  the  most  part,  a  specious  and  not  very  alarming 
affair.  But  the  contradictions  which  exist  between  the  moral 
and  social  ideals  of  humanity  and  what  is  actual  in  human 
conduct,  and  in  the  constitution  of  human  affairs  so  far  as  it 
is  dependently  related  to  conduct,  are  very  real  and  very 
disturbing.  That  whatever  appears,  really  ^s,  —  this  is  a 
proposition  which  may  well  command  the  attention,  and 
finally  the  consent,  of  every  thoughtful  mind.  But  that 
whatever  is  in  conduct  and  in  character  among  men  is  right, 
—  this  is  a  proposition,  which,  however  often  it  is  made  and 
with  whatever  brilliant  dialectics  it  may  be  supported,  is  op- 
posed to  all  the  most  firmly  seated  and  valuable  moral  con- 
victions of  mankind. 

This  conflict  between  the  Real  of  human  experience  and 
the  Ideal  constructed  by  human  thought  and  imagination, 
and  followed  —  however  fitfully  and  imperfectly  —  by  human 
endeavors,  is  the  eternal  conflict.  According  to  the  myths 
of  the  ancients  and  the  theologies  of  modern  times,  it  was 
waged  in  invisible,  supermundane  regions,  before  it  began  to 
be  waged  upon  earth.  The  theoretical  solution  of  the  conflict, 
as  respects  its  origin,  its  fullest  significance,  and  its  ultimate 
issue,  is,  however,  as  satisfactorily  treated  as  is  compatible 
with  the  limitations  of  human  knowledge,  when  it  is  shown 
how  one  may  believe  that  the  ultimate  Source  of  both  the 
reality  and  of  the  ideals  which  still  await  realization  is  one 
and  the  same  World-Ground.  This  World-Ground  is  a 
Personal  Will  that  is  pledged  and  able  to  effect  the  pro- 
gressive realization  of  the  ideals  which,  too,  owe  their  origin 


MOEALITY  AND  THE  WORLD-GROUND  635 

and  historical  development  to  Him.  In  a  word,  the  same 
Ethical  Spirit  who  inspires  the  moral  ideals  of  man,  and  who 
reveals  liis  own  being  in  their  historical  evolution,  will  secure, 
and  is  securing,  the  realization  of  the  ideals  in  the  world's 
actual  on-going.  If  one  may  have  a  reasonable  faith  in  this 
conclusion,  then  certainly,  however  severe  the  temporary 
conflict  may  be,  and  whether  this  conflict  be  raging  within 
the  soul  of  the  individual  or  within  the  social  organization, 
its  final  issue  and  fuller  significance  are  secure.  Well- 
founded  moral  optimism  makes  large  demands  on  religious 
faith.  Only  wlien  one  is  confident  that  there  is  a  Power  in 
human  history,  which  is  over  and  throughout  it  all,  and 
which  effectively  makes  for  righteousness,  can  one  hopefully 
survey  the  large  and  long-existing  disruption  between  the 
actual  moral  conditions  of  humanity  and  humanity's  own 
highest  moral  ideals.  The  only  power  which  can  be  con- 
ceived of  as  at  once  interested  and  suitable  to  effect  this 
progressive  reconciliation  of  the  actual  and  the  ideal  is  God. 


CHAPTER  XXYI 

THE  ULTIMATE  MORAL  IDEAL 

In  proposing  to  ourselves  the  ultimate  problem  of  a  philos- 
ophy of  conduct  it  was  said  (see  p.  461)  that  "  ethics  cannot 
avoid  questions  of  the  destiny  of  the  individual  and  of  the 
race,"  if  it  wishes  satisfactorily  to  treat  of  this  problem.  ''  All 
explanation  is  teleological  and  has  reference  to  an  end  to  be 
realized.  Especially  and  most  obviously  true  is  this  of  the 
phenomena  with  which  ethics  deals."  What  is  this  End,  or 
Goal  of  endeavor,  to  which  all  the  strivings,  however  limited 
in  their  success,  of  the  human  race  look  forward,  so  far  as  the 
philosophy  of  conduct  can  take  them  into  its  account  ?  The 
question  has  already  been  answered,  but  only  in  an  approxi- 
mate and  partial  way.  Perhaps  no  more  than  an  approximate 
and  partial  answer  can  ever  be  expected  as  the  result  of  re- 
flective thinking.  Certainly,  philosophy  can  now  furnish  no 
complete  answer  to  this  ethical  inquiry.  In  such  a  case  briefly 
to  gather  together  the  fragments  of  an  opinion  is  all  which  the 
concluding  chapter  of  this  treatment  of  the  problem  of  con- 
duct should  attempt.  I  believe,  however,  that  it  is  quite  legit- 
imate to  indulge,  within  carefully  drawn  limits,  in  those 
anticipations  and  conjectures  which,  while  they  never  admit 
of  scientific  proof  and,  rarely,  even  of  definite  and  defensible 
statement,  are,  nevertheless,  among  the  most  valuable  of  our 
mental  possessions  as  measured  by  that  standard  of  worth 
compliance  with  which  results  in  the  most  satisfactory  living. 

It  was  stated  early  in  the  course  of  this  investigation  that, 
without  doubt,  some  form  of  the  Good  is  the  ultimate  ideal  of 


THE  ULTIMATE  MORAL  IDEAL  637 

man's  moral  life  and  moral  development.  This  phrase,  "  the 
Good,"  however,  includes  all  the  ends  whose  realization  brings 
any  form  of  satisfaction  to  the  sentient  and  self-conscious  life 
of  man  ;  and  among  goods  are  to  be  distinguished  three  classes 
which,  although  they  are  cognate  and  interconnected,  just  as 
are  all  the  different  functions  of  the  one  human  soul,  are  not 
by  any  means  precisely  the  same.  The  objects  which  afford 
the  three  forms  of  a  satisfaction  which  may  be  called  an  in- 
itself  good  are  designated  as  pleasant,  or  as  beautiful,  or  as 
morally  right.  But  in  all  cases,  the  actual  good  is  the  living 
state  or  activity,  the  actual  experience,  of  a  self-conscious  soul. 
And  when  inquiry  is  made  as  to  what  kind  of  states  or  activi- 
ties are  those  which  merit  the  name  of  being  morally  good, 
the  answer  of  empirical  ethics  is  given  in  the  enumeration  of 
those  forms  of  conduct  which,  taken  together  and  in  harmony, 
constitute  the  Virtuous  Life.  This  Life  is  the  moral  in-itself 
Good.  And  here  I  most  heartily  agree  with  Mr.  Bradley  when 
he  declares :  ^  "  Against  the  base  mechanical  'BavavaCa^  which 
meets  us  on  all  sides,  with  its  '  What  is  the  use  of  goodness, 
or  beauty,  or  truth,'  there  is  but  one  fitting  answer  from  the 
friends  of  science,  art,  or  religion  and  virtue,  '  We  do  not 
know,  and  we  do  not  care ; '  "  if  by  this  confession  of  ignorance 
and  indifference  it  is  meant  to  rebuke  all  attempts  to  reduce 
the  value  of  these  forms  of  that  which  is  good  to  any  merely 
mercantile  or  utilitarian  standard.  Moral  goodness,  or  the 
virtuous  life  —  I  repeat  —  is  in-itself  good ;  it  is  the  supreme 
moral  good.  And  to  say  that  such  a  life  needs  no  guaranty 
of  its  own  worth,  which  lies  outside  of  itself,  so  far  from  being 
a  vicious  circle  in  conception  or  argument,  is  simply  to  state 
a  fundamental  truth  of  ethics ;  —  namely,  that  man's  total 
moral  consciousness,  and  his  entire  ethical  experience,  alike 
assert  and  confirm  the  independent  value  of  the  virtuous  life. 

The  assertion  of  the  intrinsic  worth  of  moral  goodness  as 
furnishing  its  own  end  does  not,  however,  amount  to  a  depre- 
^  Ethical  Studies,  p.  57. 


638  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

ciation  or  denial  of  the  value  of  other  forms  of  good ;  neither 
does  it  afford  the  mind  any  means  of  discovering  how  this  par- 
ticular form  of  good  is  to  be  separated  from  these  other  forms, 
in  the  actual  life  of  the  individual  or  of  the  race.  In  all  con- 
crete ethical  judgments  we  are  obliged  to  acknowledge  the 
relations  which  exist  between  moral  goodness  and  the  other 
conceptions  of  that  kind  of  personal  existence  which  has  worth. 
Hence  in  discussing,  or  even  in  barely  conceiving,  the  nature 
of  the  moral  law,  the  nature  and  ground  of  its  sanctions,  and 
the  nature  and  guaranty  of  its  ideal,  eudaemonistic  and  aes- 
thetical  factors  cannot  wholly  be  divorced  from  the  ethical. 
Nor  is  this  fact  at  all  strange  or  in  any  degree  unaccountable. 
Indeed,  were  the  contrary  an  established  fact,  it  would  be  un- 
accountable and  even  quite  unintelligible.  A  perfectly  virtu- 
ous but  utterly  miserable  rational  being  is  not  only  not  to  be 
met  with  in  fact ;  but  such  a  being  is  not  conceivable  in  accord- 
ance with  our  knowledge  concerning  the  vital  unities  estab- 
lished between  the  sentient  and  the  moral  Self.  A  perfectly 
virtuous  but  utterly  miserable  society  composed  of  such  beings 
is  not  only  ideally  considered  an  unsatisfactory  conception, 
but  is  even  intrinsically  irrational  and  absurd.  The  ethical 
good  may  not  be  identified  with  the  purely  eudaemonistic  ;  nor 
may  the  virtuous  life  be  conceived  of  as  merely  instrumental 
to  any  other  form  of  good  lying  outside  of  its  own  precious 
self.  But  as  long  as  the  unity  of  the  various  functions  and 
experiences  of  human  nature  remains  what  it  is  —  and  this 
amounts  to  saying,  as  long  as  man  is  man  —  virtue  and  hap- 
piness cannot  be  wholly  divorced  ;  nor  can  either  be  conceived 
of  as  consisting  of  states  or  activities  that  never  concur  in 
reciprocal  relations  within  the  conscious  life  of  the  soul.  In 
a  somewhat  less  obvious  but  no  less  profound  and  important 
way  are  the  good  of  conduct  and  the  good  of  art  —  or  rather 
moral  goodness  and  beauty  —  interrelated.  To  be  perfectly 
good  morally  and  yet  to  disregard  all  considerations  of  what 
is  beautiful  is  impossible.     Especially  are  the  heroic  and  the 


THE  ULTIMATE  MORAL  IDEAL  639 

kindly  virtues  intrinsically  adapted  to  call  forth  an  admiration 
which  partakes  of  both  the  ethical  and  the  aesthetical  sides  of 
human  nature.  The  perfectly  good  man  cannot  be  all  ugly, 
both  without  and  within ;  neither  can  we  deny  the  great  value 
of  the  ministrations  rendered  to  the  moral  ideal  of  living,  in 
the  case  both  of  the  individual  and  of  the  social  organization, 
by  the  satisfactions  of  man's  craving  for,  and  love  of,  the 
beautiful. 

It  has  always  happened,  therefore,  that  The  Ideal  before 
the  aspiring  individual,  and  as  well  before  the  community  and 
the  race,  has  been  some  sort  of  a  blend  of  all  these  three 
forms  of  ideal  good.  The  ideal  Self  has  been  thought  to  com- 
bine and  reconcile,  in  some  good  degree  at  least,  all  the  sides 
of  human  activity  and  human  experience  which  are  deemed 
worthy  of  being  satisfied.  Such  a  Self  has  been  conceived 
of  as  worthily  happy  in  its  own  good  disposition  and  good 
will ;  and  thus,  too,  as  an  aesthetically  admirable  and  praise- 
worthy example  of  what  a  person  ought  to  be. 

If,  however,  one  demands  a  more  strict  and  well-defined 
conception  of  the  morally  ideal  Self,  an  answer  to  this  has 
been  furnished  by  all  the  previous  investigations.  These  in- 
vestigations have  shown  that  the  Moral  Good,  which  is  the 
Ideal  of  Ethics,  appears  in  human  consciousness  as  (1)  virtue, 
the  good  to  realize  which  is  worthy  of  approbation,  individ- 
ual and  social ;  as  (2)  duty,  or  the  good  to  realize  which  is 
obligatory  upon  the  will ;  and  as  (3)  end,  the  good  the  real- 
ization of  which  sets  the  rational  goal  of  effort  and  awards 
the  title  to  being  felicitated  by  all  rational  beings.  In  a 
word,  the  moral  ideal  which  is  ultimate  for  every  individual 
Moral  Self  is  this  same  self  8  life  history  considered  as  depend- 
ent upon  its  own  conduct  and  character.  To  live  this  ethi- 
cally ideal  life,  and  progressively  to  become  this  morally 
ideal  Self,  is  the  highest  ethical  good  for  the  individual 
moral  being. 

At  once,  however,  another  cognate  aspect  of  the  ultimate 


640  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

moral  Ideal  is  opened  before  the  expectant  imagination. 
This  aspect  emphasizes  the  social  nature  of  the  moral  Ideal. 
It  shows  that  the  conclusion  which  seems  most  final  from 
the  individual's  point  of  view  really  contains  the  demand 
within  itself  for  an  enlargement  of  its  own  domain.  The 
individual  Moral  Self  cannot  develop,  cannot  even  exist, 
much  less  successfully  pursue  its  ideal  end,  in  independence 
of  other  selves  whose  interests  are  either  accordant  with, 
or  antagonistic  to,  its  own.  Thus  the  end  of  morality  can- 
not be  realized  for  any  individual  in  independence  of  society. 
Nor  can  the  good  of  the  social  organization  —  whether  it 
be  the  good  of  happiness,  of  beauty,  or  of  morality  —  be 
conceived  of,  or  practically  treated  as  though  it  were  merely 
instrumental  to  the  moral  good  of  the  individual.  To  treat 
other  persons  as  though  they,  especially  in  respect  of  their 
attainment  of  the  ethical  ideal,  were  merely  subsidiary  to 
one's  self  is  to  abandon  the  ideal  of  a  perfect  Moral  Self; 
it  is  to  attain  a  worse  the  rather  than  a  better  position 
with  reference  to  the  standard  of  moral  goodness.  In  some 
dim  way  this  truth  has  always  been  recognized.  As  Profes- 
sor T.  H.  Green  has  said  :  ^  *'  In  the  earlier  stages  of  human 
consciousness  in  which  the  idea  of  a  true  or  permanent 
good  could  lead  any  one  to  call  in  question  the  good  of  an 
immediately  attractive  pleasure,  it  was  already  an  idea  of  a 
social  good  —  of  a  good  not  private  to  the  man  himself, 
but  good  for  him  as  a  member  of  community."  Tlius  have 
the  thoughtful  always  found  themselves  compelled  to  say, 
on  the  one  hand :  He  who  seeks  his  own  highest  moral 
good,  the  perfection  of  his  moral  Selfhood,  must  seek  to 
promote  the  same  good  in  others,  must  seek  to  serve  the 
social  ideal  of  moral  goodness ;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  he 
who  seeks  the  highest  service  to  the  ethico-social  Ideal  must 
realize  that  service  primarily  in  conforming  his  own  life  to 
his  own  moral  ideal. 

1  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  p.  247. 


THE  ULTIMATE   MORAL  IDEAL  641 

In  some  sort,  however,  the  social  good  may  be  said  to  con- 
stitute the  Ultimate  Ideal  —  as  well  of  morality,  as  also  of 
happiness,  beauty,  and  religion.  This  social  good  is  a  good 
at  all  only  in  so  far  as  it  consists  in  the  actual  living  ex- 
perience of  concrete  personal  existences.  So-called  "social 
good,"  like  every  form  of  good,  is  realizable  only  in  the  self- 
conscious  states  and  activities  of  individual  selves.  It  is  not 
itself  to  be  personified,  much  less  made  into  a  fetish  or  one  of 
the  minor  gods.  But  there  is  a  certain  limited  legitimacy  to 
the  prevalent  custom  here.  This  custom  has  been  to  gather 
into  the  mental  grasp  of  some  one  conscious  life  the  picture 
of  all  the  good,  which  a  vast  multitude  of  such  lives  might, 
through  long  stretches  of  time,  be  able  to  realize  ;  and  then 
to  conceive  of  this  picture  as  representing  the  Ultimate  Ideal 
Good.  That  the  laws,  sanctions,  and  ideals  of  conduct  which 
every  good  man  is  called  upon  to  make  his  own  suggest  some- 
thing of  this  sort  is  undoubtedly  true.  I  cannot  be  ideally 
good,  cannot  claim  any  consistent  approach  to  the  moral  ideal, 
unless  I  regard  the  relations  of  my  own  conduct  to  other  mem- 
bers of  the  race  ;  —  and  not  only  those  in  the  more  immediate 
circle  to  which  I  see  that  I  belong,  but  also  to  many  outside 
that  circle  whom  I  shall  never  see,  and  even  to  many  more 
who  belong  to  the  ages  yet  to  come. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  men  have  for  countless  centuries  con- 
ceived of  the  Ultimate  Moral  Ideal  in  a  social  way.  Above 
and  beyond,  and  as  embracing  the  particular  ideal  of  a  perfect 
moral  selfhood  which  the  individual  strives  to  realize,  there 
is  the  fair  thought  of  a  larger  and  more  comprehensive  ideal. 
This  social  ideal,  like  every  other  conception  of  great  lofti- 
ness and  comprehensiveness,  has  been  variously  and  always 
more  or  less  imperfectly  conceived.  The  ancient  Parsis  and 
Hindus  framed  it,  each  in  their  own  way.  With  a  pastoral 
people  it  differs  from  the  conception  framed  by  those  whose 
interests  are  more  agricultural  or  commercial.  Those  who 
prize  more  highly  the  values  of  science,  art,  and  philosophy 

41 


642  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

would  construct  it  with  a  comparative  disregard  for  the  factors 
which,  for  example,  the  North  American  Indians  or  the  Ainos 
would  most  surely  introduce.  The  Old  Testament  and  the 
Apocryphal  Hebrew  Scriptures  dreamed,  in  a  way  inspired  by 
the  religious  faiths  and  hopes  of  their  authors,  of  a  kingdom 
over  which  presided  the  nation's  God,  and  in  which  the  par- 
ticular type  of  prosperity  with  which  experience  had  made 
them  familiar  was  to  reach  its  highest  conceivable  expression. 
The  Stoical  moral  ideal,  too,  was  that  of  a  divine  community 
among  men.  In  the  triumph  within  the  World  of  the  "Dear 
City  of  God,"  Marcus  Aurelius  believed  as  ardently  and  as 
faithfully  as  did  the  Church  Father,  Augustine.  To  contribute 
to  this  triumph  has  long  been  esteemed  to  be  the  task  and  the 
privilege  of  the  good  man ;  and  only  in  the  completion  of  this 
task,  and  in  the  enjoyment  of  this  privilege,  could  the  indi- 
vidual moral  self  progressively  realize  its  own  ideal.  The 
mediaeval  systems  of  ethics  indeed  emphasized  the  idea  of 
perfection  according  to  a  Law  —  divine,  or  human,  or  a  coin- 
cidence of  both.  But  even  this  more  impersonal  way  of  pre- 
senting the  ultimate  ideal  of  morality  was  essentially  of  a 
social  character.  Pre-eminently  in  modern  times,  by  all  the 
different  types  and  forms  of  socialistic  conceptions,  is  the  ideal 
after  which  men  feel  themselves  morally  bound  to  strive  in 
respect  of  conduct  and  of  character,  an  ideally  constituted 
community  of  morally  upright  men. 

Thus  has  the  imagination  of  man  constructed  some  form 
of  a  social  order  which  should  transcend  anything  hitherto 
realized  by  human  experience ;  and  the  actualization  of  this 
superior  social  order  has  been  held  up  before  the  mind  and 
the  will  of  the  race  as  the  goal  of  its  endeavors.  As  with  the 
more  individual,  so  with  the  more  social  Ideal,  the  imagina- 
tion has  never  been  satisfied  wholly  to  exclude  from  the 
picture  any  of  the  forms  of  the  in-itself  Good.  However 
constructed  —  whether  by  the  most  altruistic  of  communists 
and  socialists  or  by  the  most  orthodox  and  old-fashioned  of 


THE  ULTIMATE  MORAL  IDEAL  643 

theologians  —  the  end  of  social  development  is  made  somehow 
to  combine  the  realization  of  the  conditions  for  the  highest 
happiness,  together  with  the  most  perfect  beauty,  and  the 
most  exalted  goodness,  of  the  entire  community. 

The  Ultimate  Moral  Ideal,  however,  makes  prominent  the 
conception  of  a  social  organization  which  is  arranged  on  a 
basis  of  righteousness  and  good  will ;  and  in  which  all  the 
different  members  are,  each  in  his  own  way,  realizing  his  own 
ideal  and  yet  all  contributing  to  the  righteous,  happy,  and 
beautiful  life  of  all  the  others.  In  a  word,  the  goal  set  before 
the  ethical  history  and  evolution  of  the  race  is  the  formation 
and  continuance  of  a  community  of  moral  selves,  all  of  whom 
are  contributing  by  their  conduct  and  their  character  to  the 
highest  and  most  worthy  social  life  conceivable,  —  so  far  as 
this  highest  conceivable  social  life  is  dependent  upon  the 
conduct  and  the  character  of  the  members  of  the  community. 

The  religious  form  of  a  similar  conception  is  embodied 
in  such  titles  as  a  "  Divine  Community,"  a  "  City  of  God,"  a 
"  Kingdom  of  Heaven,"  or  a  "  Kingdom  of  God."  From  the 
point  of  view  held  by  this  conception,  the  nature  of  the  right 
is  ever  more  clearly  defined  in  connection  with  the  progres- 
sive "  coming "  of  that  Kingdom ;  the  superior  and  all-inclu- 
sive good  for  man  is  to  share  in  a  happy,  beautiful,  and  holy 
community,  —  an  ever-blessed  society,  whose  inspirer,  ruler, 
and  immanent  life  is  the  Absolute  Ethical  Spirit  whom  reli- 
gious faith  calls  God.  That  the  Ultimate  Moral  Ideal  has,  in 
fact,  been  construed  in  some  such  way  as  this  by  minds  in- 
fluenced not  only  by  religious  faith,  but  also  by  insight  into  the 
significance  of  human  society  and  of  its  history,  is  true  be- 
yond dispute.  What  Paulsen  says^  of  one  great  poet  and 
philosopher  may  be  said  of  many  another :  "  Even  for  a  man 
like  Goethe,  who  stands  firmly  upon  the  earth  and  joyfully 
appropriates  it  with  his  entire  being,  it  has  always  been  the 
deepest  yearning  of   his   heart  to  gaze  into  a  boundless, 

1  A  System  of  Ethics,  p.  161. 


644  PHILOSOPHY   OF  CONDUCT 

purer  realm,  in  which  everything  that  the  hazy  atmosphere 
of  our  narrow  earthly  existence  encompasses  dissolves  and 
vanishes." 

To  prove  the  objective  validity  of  man's  trust  in  such  an 
Ultimate  Moral  Ideal  by  an  appeal  to  the  history  of  man's 
ethical  development  lies  outside  of  the  bounds  of  ethics.  The 
philosophy  of  conduct  could  not  depend  on  such  historical 
evidence,  even  if  it  were  discoverable  to  a  still  larger  extent 
than  it  is.  The  highest  ideal  constructions  of  the  moral  Self, 
under  the  influence  of  its  social  cravings  and  social  faiths, 
,  hopes,  and  aspirations,  do  not  admit  of  having  their  possi- 
bility demonstrated  in  a  scientific  and  historical  way.  Neither 
do  I  find  that  any  proof  can  be  derived  from  the  so-called 
"  pure  reason "  of  man,  whether  regarded  in  its  more  cogni- 
tive or  more  practical  aspect.  But  here  again,  and  for  the 
last  time,  it  appears  that  the  acceptance  with  a  lively  faith 
and  a  cheerful  hope  of  the  postulates  of  religion  affords  the 
mind  of  the  inquirer  the  highest  attainable  satisfaction  with 
regard  to  the  prospect  of  man's  realizing  the  construct  of  his 
own  supremely  noble  and  desirable  activity  of  the  imagination 
in  the  form  of  an  Ultimate  Moral  Ideal. 

Upon  one  point,  however,  a  few  words  are  pertinent  in  this 
connection.  It  is  sometimes  held  that  the  very  conception 
which  we  have  attached,  in  the  name  of  the  world's  best 
thinking  and  believing,  to  the  words,  an  "  Ultimate  Moral 
Ideal,"  is  full  of  internal  and  mutually  destructive  contradic- 
tions.^    The  realization  of  this  fair  hope,  that  is  to  say,  would 

1  This  view  is  maintained  in  a  very  obtrusive  and  even  morally  offensive  way 
by  Mr.  A.  E.  Taylor  in  his  recent  work,  called  The  Problem  of  Conduct.  This 
author  seems  determined  to  find  all  reality  and  all  human  life  fairly  undermined 
with  antinomies,  although  the  avowed  object  of  his  treatise  is  to  discuss  the 
ethical  problem,  abjuring  all  metaphysics.  First,  the  nature  of  morality  is  shown 
to  be  "  an  unprincipled  compromise  "  (p.  244  f.).  Then  the  claims  of  self-culture 
and  those  of  social  justice  are  shown  to  be  irreconcilably  opposed  (p.  295  f.). 
Then  the  ideal  of  a  perfect  society,  or  Kingdom  of  God,  is  declared  to  be,  how- 
ever useful,  an  "  ultimately  illusory  ideal"  (p.  420  f.).  And,  finally,  the  religious 
experience  of  humanity  is  confidently  accused  of  being  (a)  "  full  of  unresolved 


THE  ULTIMATE  MORAL  IDEAL  645 

involve  the  extinction  of  all  morality ;  for  the  'perfect  society 
is  that  in  which  the  very  conditions  which  are  necessary  to 
the  existence  and  development  of  the  truly  virtuous  life  have 
come  to  an  end.  The  morality  whicli  is  conceived  of  as  no 
longer  being  a  choice  of  good  rather  than  evil  —  and  this, 
when  it  is  difficult  to  do  right  because  temptations  abound, 
and  the  possibilities  and  opportunities  of  doing  wrong  are 
frequent  —  is  thus  declared  to  be  not  genuine  morality  at  all. 
The  realization  of  the  moral  ideal  is  confessedly  progres- 
sive ;  in  its  intrinsic  character  it  is  a  struggle  upward  on  the 
part  of  the  individual  and  of  the  race ;  therefore,  we  are  told 
that  to  speak  of  it  either  as  an  "  unending  progress  "  or  as  a 
*'  finished  process  "  is  to  leave  out  of  our  conception  the  most 
essential  of  its  factors.  In  a  word,  morality  is  always  and 
necessarily  the  antithesis  of  immorality;  the  right  can  never 
have  its  nature  manifested  except  through  the  opposition  of 
the  wrong ;  the  reign  of  goodness  is  neither  conceivable  nor 
capable  of  actualization  except  in  the  form  of  a  perpetual 
triumph  over  the  hosts  and  forces  that  make  for  evil.  The 
kingdom  of  the  Devil  is  the  necessary  foil  of  the  kingdom  of 
God. 

In  reference  to  the  conception  of  an  Ultimate  Moral  Ideal 
I  beg  leave  to  quote  at  some  length  what  I  have  said  in  an- 
other connection.^  "  It  is  indeed  given  to  man  to  know  the 
world  of  concrete  real  beings  and  of  actual  events  as  falling 
under  the  principle  of  final  purpose.  This  world  is  known  to 
be  a  teleological  system,  a  construction  controlled  by  imma- 
nent ends.  But  it  is  not  given  to  man  to  '  know  *  what  is  the 
one  ultimate  end  of  the  world ;  or  whether  the  world's  cause 
has  only  one  such  end ;  much  less,  whether  this  one  ultimate 
purpose  of  Nature  —  of  the  world's  system  and  course  of 
things  and  of  selves  —  is  the  realization  of  man's  moral  ideal, 

and  unresolvable  contradictionB,"  and  thus  (6)  defective,  except  so  far  as  it  is 
capable  "of  emptying  all  our   purely  moral  conceptions  of  all  significance" 
(p.427f.). 
1  A  Theory  of  Reality,  p.  390  f. 


646  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

as  Kant  conceived  of  it.  With  regard  to  each  of  these  three 
teleological  problems,  —  although  they  are  all  essential  factors 
in  the  one  problem  of  teleology,  as  this  all-inclusive  problem 
is  viewed  in  the  Critique  of  Judgment, — only  the  better  hope,  or 
the  more  reasonable  opinion  is,  at  best,  attainable.  For  neither 
of  the  three  can  rightly  claim  the  dignity  of  a  postulate  of  moral 
reason ;  nor  is  either  of  them  essentially  connected  with  any 
so-called  *  ethico-teleological '  proof  for  the  Being  of  God. 

"  First,  —  and  strictly  speaking,  —  an '  ultimate  '  purpose  of 
the  world's  being  and  course,  as  such,  may  well  seem  some- 
thing unattainable  and  even  inconceivable.  The  End  to  be 
attained  cannot  be  regarded  as  the  complete  cessation  of  the 
process  of  its  own  attainment.  The  ultimate  purpose  of 
Nature  cannot  be  a  statical  condition.  The  very  idea  of  tele- 
ology is  an  incitement  to  strive  on  and  live  on  ;  the  idea  it- 
self perishes  in  its  own  completed  realization.  To  be  sure, 
individual  men  get  tired  and  come  to  consider  Nirvana  as 
the  ultimate  ideal ;  or  they  get  pessimistic,  and  regard  the  con- 
dition when  the  world  shall  be  a  burned-out  coal,  as  something 
devoutly  to  be  wished.  But  the  World  itself  is  not  tired  ;  and 
the  strictly  ultimate  purpose  is  always  beyond  where  man's 
hope  and  faith  —  not  to  say  man's  knowledge  —  can  go. 

"  Moreover,  second,  the  most  ultimate  purpose  which  we 
can  conceive  is  not  one  purpose ;  it  is  not  an  ideal  end  that 
can  be  brought  under  any  strict  unity  of  conception.  Some 
sort  of  a  Unity  the  final  purpose  of  the  World's  course  un- 
doubtedly must  be.  But  the  higher  the  sort  of  unity  is,  the 
more  complex  and  inclusive  is  it  of  every  conceivable  form  of 
good ;  —  and  of  yet  more  beyond.  Who  shall  define  to  knowl- 
edge or  describe  to  faith  and  hope  the  single,  the  alone  ideal 
end  which  it  shall  seem  a  worthy  end  of  all  the  World's 
Force  to  realize  through  the  infinite  Life  of  the  world's  time  ? 
A  certain  singleness  of  aim  is  necessary  for  the  physical  and 
mental  resources  of  finite  mortals.  Yet  there  is  no  real  thing 
so  mean,  so  limited  in  resources,  so  meagre  in  time,  and  so 


THE  ULTIMATE  MORAL  IDEAL  647 

single-handed  in  service,  as  not  to  have  many  ends  to  attain. 
The  only  worthy  aim  which  the  most  exalted  intelligence  can 
set  for  itself  is  to  play  its  assigned  part  well  everywhere  in 
the  infinitely  varied  and  ever-changing  system  of  selves  and 
things.  This  is  the  true  service  of  Self,  of  the  World,  and  of 
God  ;  but  its  unity  is  best  expressed  in  an  indefinite  variety  of 
actual  transactions,  and  of  diversified  forms  of  being. 

"  Nor,  finally,  can  man  attain  the  assurance  of  faith  that 
his  own  moral  culture  forms  the  one  ultimate  purpose  served 
by  the  Nature  of  which  he  is,  or  esteems  himself  to  be,  the 
crowning  product.  No  word  of  ours  shall  ever  depreciate  or 
minimize  the  moral  ideal.  Without  its  light  to  shed  upon 
the  course  of  physical  things,  down  to  the  lowest  depths  and 
into  their  minutest  details,  this  course  is  darker  than  it  other- 
wise need  be.  But  not  even  the  most  exalted  religious  faith 
which  raises  man  to  the  rank  of  a  child  of  God,  and  grasps, 
as  its  supreme  ideal,  the  redemption  of  the  race,  justifies 
exactly  the  confidence  which  Kant  assigns  to  this  postulate 
of  reflective  teleological  judgment.  Indeed,  the  conception 
of  *  moral  culture  *  may  be  so  pressed  as  to  divide  human 
nature  against  itself,  separate  human  nature  from  other 
nature,  and  even  take  man  out  of  sympathy  with  the  well- 
being  of  God.  For  man  is  not  all  ethical,  in  the  Kantian  con- 
ception of  tlie  *  ethical ' ;  neither  is  the  ethical  so  strictly  set 
apart  from  the  natural  as  that  the  one  can  dispense  with  the 
truths  of  the  other.  Nor,  finally,  is  God  an  unattainable 
Ding-an-sich  to  knowledge,  but  a  necessary  postulate  of 
moral  realities ;  and  yet  altogether  without  a  warm  and  vital 
co-conscious  indwelling  in  his  own  children." 

So  much  agnosticism  as  this,  however,  is  a  quite  different 
affair  from  that  dogmatic  agnosticism  which  somehow  claims 
to  hiow  that  the  realization  of  the  Ultimate  Moral  Ideal  is 
forever  unattainable  because  it  seems  inherently  self-contra- 
dictory. Indeed,  there  does  not  appear  to  be  any  adequate 
reason  for  inflicting  upon  this  conception  the  charge  of  in- 


648  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

herent  self-contradictions.  That  moral  life,  like  all  other 
life,  has  in  fact  thus  far  developed  under  conditions  of  con- 
flict and  struggle  against  moral  evil  is  not  an  adequate  proof 
that  the  continued  existence  of  moral  evil  is  an  indispensable 
pre-condition  of  all  moral  life.  The  "  evil  times "  which 
have  hitherto  prevailed,  and  which  still  prevail,  in  the  ethical 
development  of  humanity  do,  indeed,  call  imperatively  for  a 
certain  class  of  virtues  that  fit  men  to  contend  successfully 
with,  and  to  triumph  over,  a  prevalent  unmoral  or  immoral 
social  environment.  And  it  is  quite  in  accordance  with  the 
nature  of  moral  consciousness,  as  well  as  of  the  most  funda- 
mental principles  affecting  the  sanctions  and  grounds  of  moral 
development,  that  those  who  fight  well  should  be  esteemed 
heroically  and  most  worthily  good.  Nor  will  I  deny  that  the 
Ethical  Spirit  in  whose  Will  and  Reason  are  found  the  final 
explanation  of  the  principles,  sanctions,  and  ideals  of  the 
moral  life  of  humanity,  is  Himself  somehow  interested  and 
engaged  in  this  mighty  and  enduring  conflict  between  the 
morally  good  and  the  morally  evil. 

But  there  is  another  side  to  the  virtuous  life  ;  and  this  side, 
too,  has  its  sanctions  and  its  own  inalienable  right  to  partic- 
ipate far  more  largely  than  is  its  wont,  at  the  present  time, 
in  the  conceptions  which  correspond  to  tlie  ideals  of  morality. 
In  the  present  World-Age  all  men  must  fight  or  they  cannot 
claim  the  title  to  be  good,  or  even  to  be  aspirants  for  this  title. 
But  fighting  is  not  the  only  ethical  good;  and  the  good 
fighter  is  not  the  exclusively  good  Self ;  nor  is  the  ideal  of 
virtuous  living  essentially  a  picture  of  one  eternal  and  unre- 
mitting battle.  The  quiet  kindly  offices  of  friendship,  the 
calm  and  resigned  acceptance  of  pain  and  defeat  in  the  inter- 
ests of  the  higher  ideals  of  life,  the  willing  and  joyful  doing  of 
duty,  and  the  joy  in  living  the  divine  life  and  in  membership 
in  the  Divine  Kingdom,  are  entitled  to  recognition  among 
the  chief  moral  goods.  The  Hindu  seeker  for  Nirvana,  the 
ascetic  monk  of  ancient  or  mediaeval  Christianity,  the  mystic 


THE  ULTIMATE  MORAL  IDEAL  649 

among  the  Buddhists,  and  the  philosopher  who  regards  as  his 
ideal  the  contemplative  blessedness  of  the  "  God-intoxicated  " 
Spinoza,  —  however  one-sided  and  ethically  defective  their 
theory  and  practice  may  be  (and  certainly  they  are  no  more 
defective  than  many  an  advocate  of  the  so-called  "  strenuous 
life  "  ),  —  have  certain  truths  to  teach  the  candid  student  of 
the  philosophy  of  conduct.  The  picture  which  the  highest 
exercises  of  poetical  and  philosophical  imagination  frames 
of  the  Ultimate  Ideal  of  Morality  is  certainly  not  that  of  a 
community  of  inactive  and  dreaming  selves.  But  because  the 
goal  is  not  Nirvana  or  the  undisturbed  intuition  of  the  Abso- 
lute, it  does  not  follow  that  one  may  dogmatically  declare  a 
social  life,  which  has  passed  beyond  the  necessity  of  conflicts 
with  moral  evil,  to  be  inherently  self-contradictory. 

Moreover,  it  must  be  remembered  that  ethics  deals  primarily 
with  the  morally  Ideal,  and  with  the  other  elements  of  the  ideal 
social  life,  only  so  far  as  these  are  dependently  connected  with 
human  conduct,  its  consequences,  and  its  own  peculiar  goal 
of  endeavor.  This  restriction  of  its  most  comprehensive  and 
even  improbable  conceptions  leaves  abundant  room  in  the  en- 
vironment of  morality  for  the  healthy  stimulus  of  pain,  disap- 
pointment, and  loss — for  all  the  conflict  and  discipline  of  the 
moral  life  of  humanity  which  it  essentially  needs.  It  would 
be  foolish,  because  contrary  to  all  our  growing  scientific  knowl- 
edge of  man's  more  permanent  environing  conditions,  to  sup- 
pose that  right  conduct  can  ever  do  away  with  all  suffering 
and  struggle  from  human  life.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  man's 
inescapable  finiteness  which  furnishes  those  more  important 
conditions  which  will  always  be  productive  of  these  kinds  of 
evil.  The  Kingdom  of  God  on  earthy  at  any  rate,  can  never 
be  free  from  pain,  and  tears,  and  disappointments,  and 
struggles. 

At  last,  however,  ethical  discussion  must  confess  that  it 
has  reached  its  utmost  limits.  The  philosophy  of  conduct  can 
only  recognize  the  nature  of  those   deep-seated  faiths  and 


650  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

hopes  which  it  finds  in  the  ethico-religious  consciousness  of 
humanity.  It  can  invoke  the  aid  of  the  philosophy  of  religion 
to  render  more  clearly  well-founded,  more  explicit,  and  more 
reasonable  these  faiths  and  hopes.  So  far  as  they  converge 
upon  this  Ideal  of  a  morally  perfect  social  community,  in 
which  wrong-doing  shall  be  no  more,  not  because  all  do  alike, 
or  think  alike,  or  are  shaped  after  the  one  pattern,  but  because 
all  acknowledge  supreme  allegiance  and  render  unflinching 
obedience  to  the  manifoldly  differentiated  worth  of  a  Moral 
Self  living  in  all  the  relations,  which  personality  compels  or 
justifies,  with  other  moral  selves,  — so  far  as  this  is  true  of  these 
faiths  and  hopes,  ethics  can  defend  them  against  the  charge  of 
inherent  and  self-destructive  inconsistency.  But  here  it  must 
lay  down  its  task.  For  ethics  has  now  returned  to  the  truth 
which  Plato  saw  but  did  not  clearly  state  :  "  No  single  cate- 
gory will  adequately  express  the  nature  of  our  highest  ideals 
of  the  Good."^  This  conclusion  points  out  the  way  along 
which  the  mind  of  the  inquirer  must  pass,  after  the  more  le- 
gitimate confines  of  the  philosophy  of  conduct  have  been  tran- 
scended. The  moral  nature  of  man  must  blend  its  voice  in 
harmony  with  his  artistic  and  religious  nature.  Ethics  must 
clasp  hands  with  Esthetics  and  with  the  Philosophy  of  Reli- 
gion. And  such  a  threefold  cord,  which  binds  humanity  to 
the  Ideal,  cannot  be  easily  or  quickly  severed. 


Our  investigation  of  the  phenomena  of  man's  moral  life 
and  moral  development  began  with  the  lowly  attempt  to  com- 
prehend the  nature  of  the  Moral  Self.  It  then  passed  on  to  a 
survey  of  those  kinds  of  conduct  which  by  a  common,  if  not 
a  strictly  universal  consent  have  come  to  be  established  in 
the  constitution  of  human  society  as  having  a  preferred  claim 
upon  the  consciousness  of  obligation,  and  as  entitled  to  be 
approbated  and  rewarded  for  their  conformity  to  the  ideal  of 

1  See  Taylor,  The  Problem  of  Conduct,  p.  241. 


CONCLUSION  651 

a  Virtuous  Life.  But  when  the  attempt  was  made  to  give  a 
satisfactory  solution  to  those  more  ultimate  problems  connected 
with  the  Nature  of  the  Right  and  its  relations  to  the  World 
of  Reality,  it  seemed  that  the  postulates  of  religion  became, 
if  not  necessarily  implied  and  authenticated,  at  least  needed 
in  an  important  way  for  the  help  which  they  could  afford. 
And  so  the  whole  discussion  was  lifted  into  the  invisible  do- 
main where  the  Ideals  of  the  loftiest  thought  and  imagination 
of  man  hold  their  potent  though  not  undisputed  sway. 

It  now  remains  only  to  gather  into  a  few  concluding  words 
the  results  of  this  lengthy  discussion.  And,  first,  the  impres- 
sion is  confirmed  and  justified  that  the  moral  ideals  of  humanity 
are  the  most  important  factors  in  the  moral  life  and  historical 
development  of  man.  That  this  estimate  is  true  has  been 
abundantly  proved  by  the  study  of  ethical  phenomena.  A  simi- 
lar estimate  can  be  justified  of  man's  more  definitively  aestheti- 
cal  and  religious  ideals.  In  fact,  human  history  —  whether 
it  be  the  history  of  the  individual,  or  of  the  race,  or  of  any 
particular  part  of  the  race,  or  particular  social  organization  — 
cannot  be  understood  without  admitting  that  it  is  all  largely 
founded  upon,  shot  through  and  through  with,  guided  and 
inspired  by,  ideals  and  judgments  of  worth.  Human  history 
is  the  record  of  man's  striving  to  realize  his  own  progressively 
unfolding  ethical,  artistic,  and  religious  ideals. 

This  fundamental  truth  has  its  practical  side.  No  philoso- 
phy which  does  not  give  large  room,  profound  significance, 
and  a  mighty  potency  to  the  Ideal  can  account  for  the 
experience  of  man.  Not  to  use  the  word  in  a  narrow  and 
technical  way.  Idealism  is  the  only  form  of  philosophy  which 
can  claim  to  explain  the  realities  of  human  experience.  la 
a  way  which  gives  the  key  to  the  rules  of  right  moral 
practice,  it  may  also  be  asserted  that  no  one  who  is  not  an 
idealist  can  possibly  be  a  good  man,  can  even  know  what 
kind  of  a  reality  is  meant  by  the  very  word  "goodness." 
Virtue  necessitates  belief  in  the  permanency   and   uncon- 


652  PHILOSOPHY  OF  CONDUCT 

ditioned  worth  of  ideas.  For  virtue  is  the  realization  by  the 
actual  and  historical  self  of  an  ideal  selfhood.  Morality, 
or  subjective  goodness,  consists  in  devotion  to  the  ideal. 
The  nature  of  the  right  and  the  goal  of  objective  morality 
is  given  in  the  progressive  realization  of  the  universal,  social 
Ideal.  Thus  it  is  that  without  the  constructive,  idealizing 
activities  of  thought  and  imagination,  and  without  the  awak- 
ening of  faith,  hope,  and  inspiration  having  for  their  object 
these  constructions,  and  without  the  dominance  and  guidance 
of  the  practical  life  by  these  activities,  morality  is  impossible 
for  man.  No  other  work  could  be  less  easily  spared  by  man's 
moral  evolution  than  that  which  is  wrought  by  this  construc- 
tive and  idealizing  activity  of  his  imagination  in  the  ethico- 
religious  life. 

On  the  other  hand,  however,  morality  concerns  that  which 
is  practicable  under  the  actually  existing  conditions  of  man's 
physical  and  social  environment.  Right  conduct  demands 
the  recognition,  therefore,  of  the  real  environment,  and  of 
the  actual  consequences  of  all  human  conduct;  and,  as  far 
as  possible,  of  each  particular  piece  of  conduct.  Justness, 
wisdom,  the  measuring  and  apprehension  of  opportunity  and 
of  the  results  of  success  or  failure  in  seizing  the  opportunity, 
are  essential  forms  of  the  virtuous  life.  What  is  popularly 
called  "  good,  sound  sense "  is  the  precondition  and  the 
accompaniment  of  all  good  conduct.  The  loftiest  idealism 
and  the  firmest  grasp  upon  the  unseen  realities  which  are 
constituted  or  recognized  by  the  idealizing  activities  of  man 
cannot  dispense  with  the  necessity  for  experience  with  the 
actual  behavior  of  things  and  men,  in  their  manifold  shifting 
relations,  of  things  with  things,  and  of  men  with  men.  Here 
is  the  ever-present  chance,  yes !  the  certainty  of  mistake  and 
conflict,  of  disappointment  and  temporary  defeat,  —  not  to  be 
avoided  even  by  those  who  most  firmly  and  intelligently  hold 
the  highest  and  worthiest  ideals ;  but  often  the  more  certain  to 
be  met  with  by  those  whose  ideals  are  highest  and  worthiest. 


CONCLUSION  668 

These  two  conceptions  give  us  the  picture  of  the  Moral 
Self  striving  to  realize  its  ideals  in  the  midst  of  the  real 
conditions  furnished  by  its  physical  and  social  environment. 

Between  these  two  conceptions  of  the  moral  life  —  namely, 
that  which  regards  it  in  its  ideal  aspects,  and  that  which  lays 
emphasis  rather  upon  actual  experience  with  causes  and 
effects,  means  and  ends,  conduct  and  its  proximate  sources  and 
nearer  consequences  —  there  is  another  mediating  conception 
which  ethics  teaches  us  particularly  to  emphasize.  This 
mediating  conception  is  that  of  Development,  All  realiza- 
tion of  the  Moral  Ideal,  whether  in  the  individual  or  in  the 
social  organization,  is  necessarily  partial  and  progressive. 
The  environment  of  man,  and  so  the  physical  and  social 
circumstances  on  which  his  moral  evolution  is  dependent, 
is  itself  in  a  process  of  development.  By  a  ceaseless  in- 
terchange of  actions  and  reactions  between  moral  selves 
and  this  environment  the  moral  development  of  the  race  is 
secured.  For  the  individual  and  for  the  race  there  is  no 
way  to  he  moral  but  to  become  moral.  The  only  possible 
realization  of  the  moral  ideals  is  itself  a  process  in  which 
the  ideals,  as  well  as  the  actualities  corresponding  more  or 
less  imperfectly  to  them,  are  changing.  But  it  is  the  hope 
and  faith  of  humanity  —  a  hope  and  a  faith  that  are  not 
entirely  irrational  or  devoid  of  all  foundations  in  experience 
—  that  this  process  of  changing  is  a  real  progress  ;  and  that 
the  goal  of  this  progress  is  the  establishment  of  tliat  blessed 
and  perfect  society  which  religion  calls  the  "Kingdom  of 
God." 

Therefore,  the  exhortation  of  that  system  of  ethical  con- 
clusions which  acknowledges  fully  the  ideality  of  moral  facts, 
and  the  reality  of  the  Moral  Ideal,  is  somewhat  as  follows : 
"  Hold  to  the  Ideal  and  ever  lift  it  up  ;  be  sensible  and  wiso 
in  practical  affairs,  patient  with  yourself,  and  with  all  men, 
and  with  God,  —  also,  courageous,  and  full  of  faith  and 
hope." 


654  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

The  Philosophy  of  Conduct  has  a  special  message  to  the 
social  and  political  organizations  of  the  present  day  ;  —  special^ 
not  because  they  differ  from  all  the  preceding  social  and 
political  organizations  of  humanity,  in  respect  of  the  funda- 
mental relations  which  they  sustain  to  morality,  but  because 
they  are  themselves  so  highly  specialized,  and  so  big  with 
portentous  consequences  affecting  the  welfare  of  the  race. 
Perhaps  it  is  not  altogether  fanciful  to  regard  this  message 
as  threefold,  after  the  analogy  of  the  three  divisions  of  its 
topics  which  has  been  adopted  by  the  present  treatise.  Thus 
the  first  lesson  to  learn  will  have  regard  to  the  kind  of  men 
that  make  society  and  the  nations  strong  and  great.  It  is  in 
the  character  of  the  Moral  Selfhood  of  the  individual  that  the 
enduring  and  effective  forces  of  social  and  political  strength 
and  greatness  are  to  be  found.  Human  organizations  that 
are  cemented  by  ethical  bonds,  and  that  exist  between  staunch 
and  tried  moral  selves,  alone  have  the  character  which  can 
best  resist  all  the  forces  of  dissolution  —  cosmic,  commercial, 
social,  and  political  —  that  assail  them  under  the  limitations 
of  space  and  of  time.  That  it  is  righteousness  which 
magnifies  and  greatens  nations  is  as  true  to-day  as  it  has  ever 
been;  —  witness  the  ruins  of  other  forms  of  greatness  and 
power  which  are  spotted  over  the  face  of  the  whole  earth, 
and  in  spite  of  the  current  confidence  in  rich  treasuries, 
strong  navies,  and  multitudes  of  armed  men. 

And,  again,  if  one  inquires  after  the  marks  of  a  truly  ad- 
vanced civilization,  and  of  such  a  genuine  prosperity  as  shall 
rightly  claim  a  high  estimate  in  the  scale  of  the  values  of 
human  existence,  it  is  in  the  conception  of  the  Virtuous  Life 
that  one's  answer  must  be  found.  For  society  and  for  the  na- 
tion to  be  virtuous  through  and  through  is  to  enjoy  the  right  to 
be  felicitated  for  its  prosperity,  and  assigned  the  highest  place 
in  the  ranks  of  civilized  living.  But  it  must  be  remembered 
that  the  list  of  virtues  which  enter  into  this  completer  concep- 
tion of  the  life  of  the  good  man  is  no  meagre  affair.    Wisdom 


CONCLUSION  655 

and  tnieness  are  also  fundamental  virtues ;  the  cultivation 
and  management  of  the  intellectual  forces  is  an  affair  of  good 
or  bad  conduct ;  and  he  who  remains  wilfully  ignorant  of  that 
which  he  might  know,  and  ought  to  know,  is  so  far  forth  pre- 
vented from  realizing  the  demands  of  virtuous  living.  What  is 
true  of  individuals  is  true  of  communities  and  nations  as  well. 
While,  on  the  one  hand,  then,  the  advancement  of  the  arts  and 
sciences  will  never  of  itself  make  men  highly  civilized  or  really 
prosperous,  the  cultivation  of  the  arts  and  sciences  and  the 
distribution  of  the  results  of  their  cultivation  throughout  the 
entire  multitude  of  the  nation  is  the  duty  and  the  moral 
privilege  of  those  who  would  lead  the  people  in  the  improve- 
ment of  its  moral  standards  and  in  the  uplifting  of  its  scale 
of  ethical  living.  For  man's  nature  is  a  spiritual  unity ;  and 
if  there  is  any  one  heresy  which  the  philosophy  of  conduct 
desires  to  correct,  rebuke,  and  exorcise,  it  is  the  heresy  of 
schism  between  reason  and  morality,  between  the  cognitive 
and  the  moral  Self.  Nor  is  strength  of  character  and 
power  to  overcome  difficulties  an  unimportant  factor  of  the 
virtuous  life.  For  the  prosperity  which  consists  in  the  real- 
ization of  this  life  is,  for  human  beings  under  existing  cir- 
cumstances, always  a  conquest;  and  advancing  civilization 
can  never  hope  to  substitute  the  life  of  ease  for  the  heroic 
struggle  on  which  its  advances  constantly  depend.  These  are 
more  important  factors  in  civilization  than  great  wealth,  or 
large  armies,  or  strong  navies. 

Finally,  ethics  has  a  message  to  the  nations  which  follows 
from  its  study  of  the  more  ultimate  nature  of  the  principles, 
the  sanctions,  and  the  ideals  that  cluster  about  the  conception 
of  the  Right.  Nations,  like  individuals,  cannot  afford  to  lose 
their  faiths,  aspirations,  and  hopes,  as  these  are  all  directed 
toward  and  into  the  non-sensuous  and  invisible  World.  Na- 
tions, like  individuals,  cannot  live  by  bread  alone.  For  nations, 
as  for  individual  souls,  it  is  the  things  which  are  not  seen  that 
are  eternal.     And  well  is  it  for  nations  in  their  conduct  to 


656  PHILOSOPHY  OF   CONDUCT 

recognize  the  sacred  duty  and  the  blessed  privilege  of  holding 
before  themselves,  and  before  one  another,  the  Moral  Ideal ; 
and  of  helping  humanity  in  its  longing  for,  and  its  striving 
after,  the  realization  of  this  Ideal.  For  such  is  the  deeper 
and  truer  significance  of  human  history.  As  Rothe  ^  so 
grandly  said :  "  He  who  does  not  unconditionally  believe  in 
the  Might  of  Goodness  in  the  world,  and  in  its  final  victory, 
he  can  no  longer  lead  in  human  affairs  —  I  do  not  say  rightly, 
but  even  with  any  lasting  success.  For  we  live  in  the  King- 
dom of  Redemption,  and  no  longer  in  the  kingdom  of  this 
world." 

1  Theologische  Ethik,  V.  p.  291  f. 


INDEX 


Absolute  Self,  the,  as  Ground  of 
Morality,  112,  536,  567  f.,  600  f., 
609  f.,  630  f.;  and  an  Ethical  Ideal, 
252,  536,  567  f.,  584  f.,  630  f. ;  Kantian 
view  of,  567  f.,  601,  629  (see  also 
World-Ground). 

Activity,  consciousness  of,  146  f.,  150  f. ; 
physiological  basis  of,  149 ;  relation 
of,  to  deliberation,  150f. 

JEsthetics,  relation  of,  to  Ethics,  198  f., 
650. 

Anthropology,  relation  of,  to  Ethics, 
26  f.,  473 ;  on  primitive  man,  473  f . 

Antinomies, the  Ethical,  nature  of,  135. f, 
449  f.,  582  f. ;  influence  of  religion  up- 
on them,  582  f. ;  solution  of  them,  by 
philosophy  of  religion,  631  f. 

Approbation  (and  Disapprobation),  the 
moral  feeling  of,  62  f.,  93  f.,  100; 
differences  of,  from  feeling  of  obli- 
gation, 93  f. ;  pleasures  of,  95  f .,  97  f. ; 
aesthetical  character  of,  97  f. ;  de- 
velopment of  the  feeling  of,  100  f. 

Aquinas,  Thos.,  his  doctrine  of  the 
virtues,  581. 

Aristotle,  his  ethical  terminology,  8  f . ; 
on  ethics  as  politics,  1 5,  548 ;  his  use 
of  psychological  method,  21  f . ;  views 
on  exactness  of  method,  33  (note)  ; 
on.  happiness  as  supreme  good,  36  f . ; 
his  classification  of  the  virtues,  61 , 1 06, 
225;  on  voluntary  action,  66  f.,  150; 
his  doctrine  of  "the  mean,"  107,  122, 
233  f. ;  on  consciousness  of  freedom, 
150  f.,  163f.;  on  courage,  234,  237, 
238  f. ;  and  temperance,  247  ;  on  vir- 
tue as  trained  faculty,  264,  393  ;  on 
truth,  296  f.,  306;  and  friendship, 
311,  313,  318,  321,  329;  on  perma- 
nence of  moral  principles,  393 ;  and 
casuistry,  415  ;  his  conception  of  hap- 
piness, 475  f .,  478  f . 

Art,  influence  of,  upon  growth  of  kindly 
feeling,  326,  328  f. 


Bacon,  on  the  ideal  of  conduct,  494. 

Bain,  on  happiness  as  only  final  good, 
42. 

Balfour,  Mr.,  on  the  origin  of  moral 
principles,  400. 

Bhagavad  Gita,  its  morality,  573  (see 
also  Hinduism). 

"  Book  of  the  Dead,"  the  Egyptian,  the 
morality  of,  565,  585. 

Bowne,  Prof.,  his  definition  of  merit, 
101. 

Bradley,  Mr.,  on  utilitarian  ethics,  637. 

Browning,  on  the  vice  of  indecision, 
229  ;  and  on  happiness  and  morality, 
493. 

Buddhism,  its  influence  on  human  pas- 
sion, 254 ;  and  on  the  growth  of  hu- 
mane feeling,  330 ;  its  representation 
of  the  Divine  pity,  556  f. 

Carltle,  on  pleasure  as  an  end,  482 
(note). 

Carriere,  on  the  moral  World-order, 
626. 

Cams,  on  relation  of  duty  and  belief  in 
God,  577  (note). 

Caspari,  on  moral  freedom,  138. 

Casuistry  (chap.  XVII.),  nature  of, 
41 5  f.,  418  f.;  as  ethical  discipline, 
417 1,  569  ;  sources  of,  418  f.,  422  f. ; 
sphere  of,  423  f. 

Causation,  consciousness  of,  in  moral 
development,  107,  111  f.,  168  f.;  law 
of,  as  related  to  moral  freedom,  164  f., 
168  f.,  183f. ;  psychological  origin  of, 
184f. 

Character,  the  conception  of,  174  f., 
231  f.;  strength  of,  231  f.,  248  f.  (see 
also  Moral  Self ,  development  of). 

Christianity,  influence  of,  on  humane 
feeling,  330,  331  f.,  404  f.;  its  concep- 
tion of  perfect  morality,  351  f .,  443  f . ; 
and  of  ideal  manhood,  443  f. 

Cicero,  use  of  the  word  "  moral,**  9. 


42 


658 


INDEX 


Commercialism,  influenco  of,  on  hu- 
mauitarian  feeling,  332  f. 

Communism,  ethicvS  of,  260. 

Conduct,  importance  of,  3  f.,  156  f., 
342  f.,  416  f.;  ethics,  the  science  of, 
7,  537  f.,  654  ;  the  Ideal  of,  10,  11  f., 
442  f.,  491  f.  (see  also  Moral  Ideal)  ; 
how  different  from  action,  10  f.,  156  f., 
269,342;  imputability  of,  156f.,  162  f., 
176  f. ;  judgment,  a  species  of,  269  f. ; 
as  an  art,  442  f . 

Confucius,  on  duty  of  blood-revenge, 
158  ;  and  ethics  of  marriage,  256. 

Conscience,  popular  meaning  of,  60, 
90  f.,  189  f.,  417  f.;  divergent  views 
of,  90,  189  f. ;  proper  use  of  the  term, 
90  f.,  189  f.;  authority  of,  191,  384  f., 
417  f. ;  pathological  lack  of,  417  (see 
also  Consciousness,  as  moral,  and 
Moral  Self). 

Consciousness,  as  moral,  analysis  of, 
59f.,  69f.,  129,  189  f.;  as  imposing 
obligations,  384  f. 

Crawford,  on  relation  of  happiness  to 
virtue,  488. 

Custom,  as  related  to  morality,  27  f., 
292  f.,  342,  615  f.,  618  f.;  conformity 
to,  not  virtue,  342  f. 

Delian  Inscription,  on  the  kinds  of 
the  Good,  36. 

Determinism,  a  scholastic  theory,  136, 
145 ;  its  basis  in  fact,  139  f.,  142, 
169  f.;  its  fallacy  of  hypostasizing, 
145,  154  f.,  163,  169;  its  objections 
to  moral  freedom,  164  f.,  169  f.,  183  f. ; 
the  "Old-Fashioned,"  165f.,  168f. ; 
and  the  "New-Fashioned,"  165  f., 
1781;  its  conception  of  the  Self, 
169  f. ;  its  statistical  argument,  180f. 
(see  also  Will). 

Development,  importance  of  conception 
of,  201  f .,  203, 443  f .,  495, 526  f .,  534  f ., 
653 ;  as  applied  to  the  Moral  Ideal, 
206  f.,  443  f.,  447,  461  f.,  526  f.,  531  f., 
653  f. ;   naturalistic  theory  of,  602  f . 

Dewey,  Prof.,  on  moral  action,  11 
(note),  130  ;  and  idea  of  duty,  366  f. ; 
on  distinction  between  pleasure  and 
happiness,  478 ;  and  hedonistic  the- 
ory, 486. 

Doring,  on  the  highest  good,  469. 

Dogmatism,  immorality  of,  304. 


Dress,  customs  regulating,  122  f. 

Dumout,  on  hedonistic  calculations,  489 
(note). 

Duties,  classification  of,  223  ;  conflict  of, 
415  f.,  427  f.,  430  f.,  433  f.,  514  f. ;  the 
so-called  religious,  565  f. 

Duty,  conception  of,  365  f.,  370,  376  f., 
379,  388;  duties  prior  to,  367  f . ; 
varieties  of,  369  f . ;  not  always  nega- 
tive, 370  f. ;  relation  of,  to  virtue, 
371  f.,  373  f . ;  relation  of  inclination 
to,  375  f. ;  influence  of,  upon  ima<>i- 
nation,  377  f. ;  as  related  to  Moral 
Law,  379. 

Economics,  relation  of,  to  Ethics,  540, 
542  f .,  545  f. 

Edwards,  Jonathan,  on  nature  of  the 
motive,  345  f. 

Eliot,  George,  on  happiness  and  moral- 
ity, 493  f. 

Epicureans,  the  ancient,  488  (see  Hedon- 
ism). 

Ethics,  sphere  and  problem  of,  3  f .,  1 7  f., 
25,  31  f.,  60  f.,  457  f.,  538  f.,  636;  a 
science,  7  f.,  32  f . ;  its  problems  classi- 
fied, 7  f.,  31  f.;  distinctions  implied  in, 
8  f. ;  begins  with  facts,  8  f.,16  f.,  29  f. ; 
"  Data  "  of,  9  f .,  24,  29  f. ;  relation  to 
the  Ideal,  8  f.,  11  f.,  14,  55,  462  f., 
637  f.,  641  f.,  645  f.,  649;  as  dealing 
with  the  Ought,  12  f. ;  definition  of, 
14  ;  as  politics,  15  ;  methods  and  div- 
isions of  19,  20  f.,  29  f. ;  Kantian 
method  of,  criticised,  20  f .,  502  f .,  592  ; 
psychology  of,  20  f .;  its  method,  his- 
torical and  objective,  29  f. ;  but  also 
philosophical,  30  f.,  457  f.,  463,  588  f., 
636  f. ;  precision  in  study  of,  32  f. 
(note) ;  ultimate  problem  of,  457  f ., 
461  f.,  588  f.,  606  f.,  636  f. ;  Schools 
of,  464  f. ;  relation  of,  to  economics, 
540  f.,  545  f. ;  and  to  politics,  540  f., 
547,  548 ;  and  to  sociology,  548  f. ;  the 
"  universals "  of,  589  f. ;  inclusive 
character  of  the  metaphysics  of,  590  f., 
592  f. ;  Naturalism  in,  602  f.,  605  f., 
631. 

Eudaemonism,  its  conception  of  the 
Good,  42  f.,  51  f.  (note),  475  ;  on  the 
virtue  of  benevolence,  352 ;  the,  of 
Aristotle,  475  f. ;  (see  also  Hedonism 
and  Utilitarianism). 


INDEX 


659 


Euripides,  on  principle  of  friendship, 

329. 
Evolution  (see  Development). 

Farrer,  on  fear  among  savages,  236 ; 
savages'  view  of  death,  24+ ;  and 
punishment  of  auger,  253  ;  on  savage 
character,  285  f. 

Feeling,  kinds  of  the  ethical,  60,  61  f., 
93  f.,  310  f.,  325  ;  relations  of,  to  right 
conduct,  85  f.,  88  f.,  115  f.,  312  f., 
315,  326;  Virtues  of  (Chap.  XIII). 
310  f.,  315  f.,  320  f.,  326  f.,  333  f. 

Fichte,  on  untruthfulness,  436  f . ;  on  the 
World-order,  607. 

Freedom,  Moral,  nature  of,  133  f.  (chap. 
VIII.)  139f.,  1 50  f.,  164  f.,  165  f.;  com- 
plex problem  of,  133  f.,  139  f.,  150  f., 
165  f. ;  interest  of  ethics  in,  134  f., 
136  f.  ;  proofs  of,  139  f.,  142,  143  f., 
148  f.,  156  f. ;  development  of,  147  f. ; 
objections  to,  answered,  164  f.,  172  f., 
177  f.,  180  f. 

Friendship,  Aristotle's  view  of,  313,318; 
mysterious  nature  of,  317  f,,  319  f.; 
Plato's  view  of,  318  f. 

Gellids,  on  pleasure  as  an  end,  482 
(note). 

Gizycki,  hedonistic  theory  of,  469. 

God,  influence  of  belief  in,  upon  ethics, 
569  f.,  572  f.,  574  f.,  591  f . ;  as  the 
Moral  Ideal,  574  f.,  584  f.,  591  f., 
626  f.,  628,  632  f .,  647  f . ;  and  ground 
of  ethical  laws,  608  f.,  612  f. ;  and  of 
ethical  sanctions,  613  f.,  620,  623  f. 
(see  also  Absolute  Self). 

"Good,"  The,  Greek  conception  of,  10, 
34  f .,  443  ;  especially  the  Platonic,  34  ; 
difficulty  of  analyzing,  34  f.,  37; 
psychology  of  the  conception,  36  f. ; 
always  sentient  life,  37  ;  distinction 
of  instrumental  and  final,  38  f.,  198  f., 
490  f. ;  degrees  of  the,  39, 41  f.,  482  f. ; 
means  of  estimating,  40,  41  f .,  46  f. ; 
different  values  of,  40  f .,  47  f.,  479  f ., 
636  f. ;  discipline  as  means  of  realiz- 
ing, 43  f . ;  the  Ultimate  and  Supreme, 
50  f.,  55,  198  f.,  490  f.,  636  f. ;  the 
distinctively  ethical,  55,  199,  636  f., 
639. 

Grant,  Sir  A.,  on  Aristotle  33  (note), 
106  (note). 


Green,  Prof.  T.  H.,  on  ethical  develop- 
ment, 55,  640 ;  and  moral  law  as  an 
"  external  imponcnt,"  383  ;  on  con- 
flict of  duties,  428;  and  oneness  of 
humanity,  625  ;  on  the  ultimate  good, 
640. 

Grot,  Prof.  N.  la.  on  "Freedom  of 
Will,"  188  (note). 

Gummere,  on  the  origin  of  wergild, 
253. 

Habit,  influence  of,  in  ethical  life,  82  f ., 
168  f.,  175  f.,  266,  637  f. ;  as  reign- 
ing over  Will,  168  f.,  175  f. 

Happiness,  conception  of,  in  ethics, 
469  f.,  477  f.,  481  f. ;  distinction  be- 
tween pleasure  and,  471  f.,  478  f., 
492  f.;  relation  of,  to  virtue,  471  f., 
481  f.,  489  f.,  493  f.,  637  f . ;  and  to 
moral  development,  637  f. 

Hedonism,  the  method  of,  20,  482  f . ; 
its  conception  of  the  Good,  42  f.,  469, 
482,  484  f.,  492  f. ;  as  related  to  Utili- 
tarianism, 467  f.,  481  f . ;  modern 
theory  of,  469  f..  481,  489  f.  ;  the 
quantitative  and  egoistic,  482  f. ;  as 
altruistic,  484  f.,  487  f. ;  and  qualita- 
tive, 489  f.,  492  f. ;  the  calculus  of, 
489  f.,  (see  also  Utilitarianism). 

Hegel,  on  the  value  of  constancy,  355. 

Herbert,  George,  on  temperance,  247  f. 

Hinduism,  its  confusion  of  custom  and 
morality,  11,  257  ;  ceremonial  ethics 
of,  13,  125,  565 ;  sexual  morality 
of,  257  f.,  571  ;  ethical  tenets  of, 
263, 298  f.,  330  f.,  565,  571 ;  especially 
as  respects  truthfulness,  298 ;  and 
humanitarian  feeling,  330  f. ;  on 
purity  of  heart,  572  f. 

Hobbes,  his  theory,  123  f. 

Hoffding,  on  Determinism,  138. 

Hopkins,  Prof.,  on  the  good  man  in  the 
Rig  Veda,  298. 

Hospitality,  considered  as  virtuous, 
320  f. 

Humboldt,  on  frivolity,  272. 

Huxley,  Prof.,  on  Ethics  and  Evolution, 
602  f.,  606,  619. 

Ideal,  nature  of  an,  10,   589    f.   (see 

Moral  Ideal). 
Idealism,  in  Ethics,  444  (chap.  XXII.) ; 

essential  character  of,  507  f.,  509  f.. 


660 


INDEX 


511,  526  f.,  589  f.,  651  f . ;  problems 
before  it,  51 1  f.,  529  f. ;  different  forms 
of,  512  f. ;  individualism  of,  518  f.; 
yet  essentially  social,  524  f . ;  and  evo- 
lutionary, 526  f.,  531.,   651  f. 

Intention,  nature  of  an,  346 ;  the 
"good,"  347  ;  not  the  whole  of  virtue, 
346  f.,  349. 

Intuitionism,  its  method  in  ethics,  20, 
5131;  the  "Emotional,"  85,  515;  as 
a  form  of  Idealism,  513  f.,  518,  530  f. ; 
the  "perceptive,"  515  f.,  518  f.;  facts 
contradictory  to,  519  f. 

Janet,  M.,  his  classification  of  the  vir- 
tues, 218. 

Jowett,  on  Plato's  view  of  friendship, 
318  f. 

Judgment,  Ethical,  nature  of,  65  f., 
83  f.,  (chap.  Vll.,  passim),  115  f. 
269  f.;  earliest  forms  of,  83  f.,  106  f., 
285 ;  dependent  on  feeling,  86  f., 
113  f.,  115;  importance  of,  106  f., 
113  f.,  270  f. ;  grounds  of,  113  f.,  119  f., 
126  f.,  397  f. ;  relation  of,  to  volition, 
117,  129  f.,  270;  the  predicate  of, 
117  f. ;  as  intuitive,  119,  125  ;  histori- 
cal origins  of,  120  f.,  126  f.;  develop- 
ment of,  125  f.,  130  f,283,  397  f. ; 
dependence  of,  on  the  individual, 
126  f.,  273,  420  f. ;  virtues  of  (chap. 
XII.j,  271  f.,  283  f.;  as  Moral  tact. 
420  f. 

Kant,  his  use  of  the  word  reason,  15; 
method  in  ethics,  20,  502  f .,  592  ;  con- 
ception of  the  Good,  37  ;  and  of  Duty, 
377  f. ;  on  untruthfulness,  433  ;  his 
legalism,  502  f. ;  categorical  impera- 
tive of,  503 ;  his  fundamental  law  of 
moral  reason,  503  f.,  505  f.,  592 ; 
view  of  relations  between  religion 
and  moralit}^  567,  629 ;  on  teleologi- 
cal  judgment,  647. 

Karma,  moral  import  of  the  doctrine, 
109,  368  f. 

Krafft-Ebing,  on  moral  perversity,  417. 

Laurie,  Prof.,  on  the  "Good  Will," 
437 ;  and  relations  of  morality  and 
religion,  579. 

Law,  the  Moral,  conception  of,  365,  379, 
381  f .,  388, 497  f. ;  not  impersonal,  380, 


382,  384  f.,  387,  498  f. ;  but  a  product 
of  moral  consciousness,  381,  384  f., 
505  f . ;  as  an  "  external  imponent," 
384  f .,  387,  500  f. ;  and  related  to  the 
Moral  Ideal,  386  f.,  497  f.,  503  f. ;  and 
to  moral  principles,  389  f.,  501  f. ;  ul- 
timate Source  of,  609  f.,  613. 

Lessing,  on  superstition,  385  (note). 

Locke,  on  nature  of  morality,  343 ;  on 
intention,  346. 

Lotze,  on  consistency  as  virtue,  264; 
and  resignation,  282 ;  on  retribution, 
289  f . ;  and  on  benevolence,  353,  358. 

Luys,  M.,  on  Determinism,  138. 

Man,  as  ethical,  59  f.,  67  f.,  148,  162, 
202,  325,  436  f. ;  as  rational  and  free, 
162  f. ;  the  so-called  "  primitive,"  202, 
325 ;  concept  of  the  good  (chap. 
XVIII.),  442  f.  (see  also  Moral  Self). 

Marcus  Aurelius,  motto  from,  456  ;  on 
painstaking  morality,  494;  his  dif- 
ferentiation of  virtues,  504  f. 

Marriage,  customs  regulating,  120  f ., 
256 ;  ethics  of,  255  f.,  258. 

Martensen,  on  abstract  morality,  581. 

Materialism,  in  the  psychology  of  voli- 
tion, 166,  1771,  180;  and  as  Natural- 
ism in  Ethics,  602  f.,  605  1 

Martineau,  his  classification  of  the  vir- 
tues, 217  (note). 

Merit  (and  Demerit),  feeling  of,  63, 
101,  375  f. ;  complexity  of  the  concep- 
tion, 101 ;  and  its  social  implications, 
102  f. ;  and  relation  to  pleasure-pains, 
104  1 ;  and  to  inclination,  375  f . 

Mill,  J.  S.,  his  testimony  to  the  Moral 
Ideal,  243. 

Moral  Ideal,  the,  12,  14,  15  1,  18,  110, 
129,  206  f.,  363,  574  1,  589  f.,  626  1, 
639  1 ;  as  Selfhood,  110  1,  229,  363, 
432  1,  439  f .,  443  f.,  532  f. ;  develop- 
ment of,  206,  443  1,  447  1,  519  1, 
521  1;  relation  of,  to  virtue,  229, 
274  1,  344  f.,  363  1,  442  f. ;  and  to 
Moral  Law,  386  1,  626  1;  as  indivi- 
dual, 433  1,  439  1,  452  1,  517  1; 
reality  of,  447  1,  574  1,  584  1,  595  1  ; 
in  God,  as  perfect  Personality,  584  f., 
591  1,  626  1,  628 ;  possibility  of 
knowledge  of,  595  f . ;  the  ultimate 
moral  (chap.  XXVL),  637  1,  639  1, 
641  1,  643,  645  1 


INDEX 


661 


Moral  Self,  the,  conduct  as  belonging 
to,  11,  15,  17  f.,  24  f.,  145  f.,  156  f. 
(chap.  IX.),  195  f.,  220  f.,  507  f. ;  al- 
ways social,  15  f.,  76  f.,  189  f.,  194  f., 
286,  445  ;  the  Ideal  of  a,  18, 52, 100  f., 
191,  363,  386,  432  f.,  516  f. ;  complex 
nature  of  a,  24  f.,  59  f.  (Part  First, 
passim),  67,  89,  92,  191  f.,  194  f.,  271, 
532  f. ;  satisfaction  of,  52 ;  conduct 
imputable  to,  156,  158  f.,  532  f. ;  de- 
velopment of  the,  201  f.,  361,  432  f., 
439  f.,  445  f. ;  as  furnishing  the  prin- 
ciple of  unity  for  the  virtues,  361  f., 
632 ;  God  as  the  Absolute,  385  f.,  536, 
630  f. ;  not  a  mechanism,  408  f. 

Moral  Principles,  universality  of  (chap. 
XVI.),  389,  392  f.,  394,  401  f.,  404  f., 
412 ;  relation  of  to  moral  laws,  389  f. ; 
nature  of,  389  f.,  391 ;  development 
of,  391  f.,  396  f.,  401  f.,  404  f.,  412  ; 
validity  of,  392,  396. 

Morality,  as  different  from  custom,  27  f., 
273  f.,  342  f .,  484 ;  function  of  the 
total  Self,  227,  229  f.,  271,  342  f., 
439  f.,  517  f.;  fidelity  to  an  Ideal, 
265  f .,  274,  352  f.,  437  f .,  458  f .,  485  f., 
522  f.,  528  f.,  558 ;  implies  evaluation 
of  ends,  273,  479  f. ;  and  their  real- 
ization, 274  f .,  439  f . ;  not  identical 
with  any  one  virtue,  352  f.,  357  f. ; 
as  related  to  Eeality,  458  f.,  567  f., 
597  f.,  601  f.,  613  f. ;  individuality  es- 
sential to,  518  f. ;  and  yet  social,  523  f., 
615  f.,  618  f.,  624;  relation  of,  to 
religion  (chap.  XXIV.),  552  f.,  560, 
561  f.,  568  f.,  571  f.,  575  f.,  578  f., 
582  f . ;  danger  of  '*  double  morality," 
580  f. ;  as  obedience  to  God,  584  f., 
612;  ultimate  Ground  of  (chap. 
XXV.),  588  f.,  609  f.,  613  f .;  source  of 
the  sanctions  of,  613  f.,  620,  622  f., 
625. 

Morals,  conception  of,  8  f.,  27,  292  f. ; 
relation  of,  to  custom,  292  f.,  342  ; 
and  to  philosophy  and  religion, 
326  f . ;  not  identical  with  morality, 
342  f.,  375. 

Mosaic  Code,  ethics  of,  256,  259,  280, 
350  f. ;  on  love  as  the  fulfilling  of 
the  Law,  350  f. ;  its  view  of  God  as 
Righteousness,  585. 

Motive,  feeling  of  obligation  as  a,  94  f. ; 
nature  of  a,  139  f.,  151  f.,  165f.,  170f.; 


quality  of,  not  all  of  virtue,  343  f . ; 
the  "good,"  345. 
Muirhead,  on  relations  of  philosophy  to 
ethics,  30  f. 

Nature,  unethical  conception  of,  602  f,, 
615 ;  its  right  to  command,  615  f. ;  as 
Ethical  Spirit,  617. 

Nicomachean  Ethics,  referred  to,  9,  15, 
22,  33  (note),  36,  61,  66,  106,  150  f., 
163,  225  f.,  233  f.,  238,  247,  264,  278, 
284  f.,  311,  313,  318,  329,  339,  346, 
393,  402,  415,  475  f.,  548. 

Obligation,  feeling  of,  69  f.,  89  f,, 
366  f.,  384  f.,  614  f.;  its  primary  char- 
acter, 70  f.,  79,  88  f.,  91  f.,  614;  con- 
nection with  pleasure-pains,  72  f., 
77  f.;  origin  of,  73  f.,  617;  develop- 
ment of,  83  f.,  89  f.,  617  f. ;  relation 
of,  to  duty,  366  f. ;  and  to  moral  law, 
384  f.,  614  f. 

Old  Testament,  morality  of,  123 ;  moral 
ideal  of,  642. 

Ought,  the  feeling  of,  12  f.,  62  f.,  70  f., 
91  f. ;  conditions  of  its  origin  and  de- 
velopment, 74  f.,  83  f. ;  uniquely  hu- 
man, 80  f .  (see  also  Obligation,  feeling 
of). 

Partisanship,  immorality  of,  304  f. 

Paulhan,  M.,  on  volition  and  psychic 
systems,  151. 

Paulsen,  on  ethics  as  natural  science, 
17;  on  Will,  153;  on  Plato's  Re- 
public, 225;  ancient  Saxon  view  of 
courage,  244 ;  his  view  of  falsehood, 
297,  434 ;  and  conception  of  duty, 
370  f. ;  on  hedonistic  theory,  469  ;  and 
relation  of  morality  to  religion,  559 ; 
on  the  moral  ideal,  643  f. 

Person,  see  Self. 

Personality,  importance  of  conception 
of,  201  f.,  361  f.,  533  f.,  651 ;  as  fur- 
nishing  a  principle  for  unifying  the 
virtues,  361  f.  (see  also  Moral  Self). 

Perty,  on  natural  sympathy,  325. 

Pfleiderer,  on  morality  and  religion, 
552;  and  the  development  of  moral 
ideals,  628. 

Philosophy,  relations  of,  to  Ethics,  30  f ., 
133,  188,  326  f.,  458  f.,  463  f.,  590  f., 


662 


INDEX 


593  f . ;  influence  of,  on  the  develop- 
ment of  benevolence,  326  f. 

Piety,  as  an  inclusive  virtue,  560. 

Plato,  his  psychological  Ethics,  21  f., 
224  f . ;  conception  of  the  Good,  34  ; 
classification  of  the  virtues,  224  f ., 
363;  and  doctrine  of  wisdom,  270; 
and  of  justice,  295:  on  friendship, 
318  f.;  his  view  of  influence  upon 
morals,  of  the  popular  religion,  573  f . ; 
on  morality  and  immortality,  586  f. 

Pleasure-pains,  psychology  of,  43  f., 
338  f.,  470  f.,  47*5 ;  influence  of,  in 
ethical  discipline,  43  f.,  73,  470  f. ; 
relation  of,  to  feeling  of  obligation, 
73  f.,  76  f.,  339  f.,  471 ;  sources  of  the, 
472  f.,  475  f. 

Politics,  relation  of,  to  Ethics,  540  f., 
547  f. ;   Aristotle's  view  of,  548. 

Psychology,  relation  of  to  Ethics,  20  f., 
43  f.,  133  f.,  338  f.,  470  f.,  554  (note) ; 
its  doctrine  of  pleasure-pains,  339, 
470  f. 

Kealitt,  theory  of,  as  related  to  Ethics, 
459  f.,  463  f.,  511  f.,  568,  593  f.,  597  f., 
599  f.,  611  f. 

Religion,  as  a  source  of  morals,  124  f., 
329  f.,  404,  556  f.,  563  f. ;  general  re- 
lation of,  to  Ethics,  198  f.,  329  f., 
404  f .,  650 ;  and  to  morality,  552  f ., 
559  f.,  561  f.,  568  f.,  573  f.,  578  f., 
61 1  f.,  628  f. ;  universality  of,  555  f. ; 
ethical  roots  of.  559  f. ;  special  effect 
on  morality  of  the  postulates  of, 
561  f.,  566  f.,  571  f.,  576  f.,  578  f., 
582  f.,  584  f.,  588. 

Riehl,  on  moral  freedom,  138. 

Right,  the,  conception  of,  65  f.,  117  f., 
520  f.,  528 ;  the  ground  of,  491  f. ; 
subjective  character  of,  520  f.,  528  ; 
objective  character  of,  520  f.,  529  f. ; 
as  unchanging,  521  (Nature  of  the, 
Part  Third). 

Rose,  M.,  on  the  influence  of  civilization 
upon  savage  virtues,  314. 

Roskoff,  on  relation  of  morality  and 
religion,  552  f. 

Rothe,  on  the  might  of  goodness,  656. 

Saussaye,  on  the  relation  of  morality 

to  religion,  556. 
Schopenhauer,  ou    the   conception  of 


"  Ought,"  13  f. ;  and  of  the  Good,  37 ; 
on  appetite  of  sex,  256  f. 

Schurman,  on  morality  of  the  family, 
255. 

Schwarz,  Hermann,  on  intuitive  moral 
feeling,  87. 

Self,  consciousness  of,  a  condition  of 
moral  development,  107, 1091,  142  f ; 
theldealof,  llOf.,  191  f.  (see  Moral 
Ideal) ;  defective  conceptions  of, 
158  f.,  160  f. ;  the  Social,  as  included 
in  the  Moral,  192  f. ;  (see  also  Moral 
Self). 

Selfhood,  importance  of  conception  of, 
201  f .  (see  also  Personality  and  Moral 
Self). 

Seth,  Prof.  James,  on  distinction  be- 
tween pleasure  and  happiness,  478. 

Shaftesbury,  Lord,  on  moral  emotions, 
85  f.,  88. 

Sidgwick,  on  ethics  as  ideal,  9  ;  on  feel- 
ing of  obligation,  81 ;  and  "  Free  Will 
controversy,"  136;  his  Hedonism, 
487  (and  note). 

Simmel,  ou  conflict  of  duties,  428. 

Sociology,  relation  of,  to  ethics,  548  t 

Sophists,  the,  their  ideas  ou  Ethics,  31. 

Sophocles,  on  the  Divinity  of  moral 
Law,  572. 

Spencer,  Herbert,  on  ethics  as  "  doubly 
ideal,"  9  ;  feeling  of  approbation,  103. 

Spinoza,  on  the  intellectual  love  of  God, 
357, 476  ;  his  conception  of  virtue,  476. 

Stephen,  Leslie,  on  voluntary  action,  66 ; 
on  feeling  of  obligation,  80  f. ;  on 
truthfulness,  360. 

Stoics,  the,  their  conception  of  the 
"good  man,"  250. 

Sympathy,  nature  of  the  feeling,  75  f., 
310  f.,  323,  325;  relation  of,  to 
morality,  87  f.,  310  f.,  312,  323  f. 

Tact,. need  of,  in  conduct,  419  f.,  422; 
psychology  of,  420  f. ;  factors  in,  421, 
422  f . ;  cultivation  of,  422  f . 

Taylor,  Mr.  A.  E.,  on  problem  of  con- 
duct, 644  (note). 

Thilly,  on  classification  of  ethical  theo- 
ries, 468  (note). 

Time,  consciousness  of,  in  moral  devel- 
opment, 107  f.,  109. 

Tourgueneff,  on  the  conception  of  duty, 
378  f. 


INDEX 


663 


Truth,  regard  for,  29G,  299  f.,  301  f., 
359  f. ;  its  value  for  personality,  300  f ., 
303,  307  f.,  360,  433  f. ;  abstract  con- 
ception of  the,  301  f. 

Tylor,  on  relation  between  ethics  and 
Animism,  141  f. 

Utilitarianism,  its  method,  20,  489  f. ; 
its  conception  of  the  Good,  52  f. 
(note),  474,  490,  637;  as  related  to 
hedonistic  theories,  467  f.,  479  f., 
481  f.,  489  f.,  494  f. ;  development  of, 

480  f.,    490  f. ;    problems   before   it, 

481  f.,   491  f.,  495  f . ;  modern  forms 
of,  489  f. 

Virtue,  conception  of,  211  f.,  226, 
264  f.,  338,  342  f.,  371  f.,  388;  possi- 
bility of  a  theory  of,  213  f.,  226  f., 
337  f. ;  as  function  of  the  total  Self, 
227  f.,  229  f.,  343  f.,  347 ;  constancy 
essential  to,  264  f.,  355;  unity  of 
(chap.  XIV.),  338,  f.  346  f.,  352  f., 
361  ;  not  identical  with  motive,  343  ; 
or  intention,  346  f.,  349 ;  or  any  one 
virtue,  352  f.,  357  f. 

Virtues,  the,  Aristotelian  classification 
of,  61,  106  f.,  225  ;  proper  classifica- 
tion of  (chap,  X.),  217  f.,  224  f.,  226  f., 
371  f . ;  lists  of,  217;  self-regarding 
and  social,  218  f .,  451  f. ;  as  related  to 
duties,  371  f . ;  conflicts  among  the, 
451  f.,  632  f. 

Volition,  faculty  of,  as    necessary  to 


morality,  65  f ,  117  f.,  150  f.;  as  de- 
pendent on  judgment,  117  f. ;  relation 
of,  to  psychic  systems,  151  f . ;  termi- 
nation of  the  process  of,  152  f. 

Wattz,  on  relation  of  morality  and 
religion,  552. 

Watson,  Prof.,  on  the  Sophists,  31  ;  and 
on  hedonistic  theories,  468  (note) ; 
on  relation  of  morality  and  religion, 
592. 

Will  (see  also  Moral  Freedom,  chap. 
VIII.),  physical  theories  of,  138, 
149  f.,  164  f. ;  as  self-determining, 
137  f.,  143  f.,  148,  150  f.,  155,  163  f., 
248;  virtues  of  the  (chap.  XI.),  231  f., 
246  f.,  260  f.,  266  f. ;  central  in  char- 
acter, 232  f . ;  so-called  "  good  will," 
232,  437  ;  conception  of  the  Divine, 
612,  624  f. 

World-Ground,  the,  philosophic  view  of, 
590,  597  f .,  599  f.,  632  f. ;  as  also  the 
ground  of  morality,  590  f .,  593,  596  f., 
601  f.,  608  f.,  612  f. ;  and  of  its  sanc- 
tions, 613  f.,  620,  622  f. ;  and  of  moral 
ideals,  626  f.,  647. 

Wuudt,  his  conception  of  Ethics,  7,  17, 
27  ;  view  of  custom,  27 ;  on  ethical 
vocabulary,  49  ;  endowment  of  primi- 
tive man,  202,  325,  393  ;  on  the  virtue 
of  hospitality,  321 ;  on  the  influence 
of  Christianity  upon  self-sacrifice, 
330 ;  on  morality  and  religion,  552, 
556. 


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recommended  without  qualification  for  such  use. 

I  find  it  a  most  excellent  and  useful  work.  I  shall  take  pleasure  in  recommend- 
ing it  to  my  classes  as  a  most  thorough  and  exhaustive  treatment  of  psychology.  — 
Prof.  J.  H.  Hyslop,  of  Columbia  College. 

The  beauty  of  this  mighty  work  is  that  it  informs  us  regarding  all  well-defined 
modern  psychology,  that  it  makes  us  think  at  our  best,  that  it  tends  to  make  the 
reader  a  master  in  psychologic  thought.  It  does  not  make  the  reader  a  slave,  but  it 
tends  to  emancipate  him  from  his  own  vague  knowledge  and  vicious  ignorance.  It  is 
the  great  masterpiece  in  Americanized  modern  psychology.  —  Journal  of  Education. 


Primer  of  Psychology 

By  George  Trumbull  Ladd,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Philosophy  in 
Yale  University.     i2mo.   pp.  226.    $1.00  net. 

A  TEXT-BOOK  for  elementary  students,  and  was  written  by  this 
eminent  author  because  no  book  in  America  had  been  found 
satisfactory  for  academies  and  high  schools,  and  for  a  large  class  of 
general  readers  who  might  find  some  pleasure  and  perhaps  more  profit 
in  reading  a  very  brief  and  simple  treatise  on  psychology. 
Contents  :  I.  The  Mind  and  its  Activities  —  II.  Consciousness  and 
Attention  —  III.  Sensations  —  IV.  Feeling  —  V.  Mental  Images 
and  Ideas  —  VI.  Smell,  Taste  and  Touch —  VII.  Hearing  and  Sight 
—  VIII.  Memory  and  Imagination  —  IX.  Thought  and  Language  — 
X.  Reasoning  and  Knowledge  —  XI.  Emotions,  Sentiments  and 
Desires — XII.  Will  and  Character  —  XIII.  Temperament  and 
Development. 

This  little  book  is  not  an  abstract  of  a  larger  work.  It  is  a  compact  statement  in 
the  simplest  words  the  author  could  select  of  the  purport  and  achievements  of  the  new 
science.  Even  experts  might  find  it  convenient  as  an  introduction  to  Professor 
Ladd's  system. — New  York  Tribune. 

Professor  Ladd  has  come  to  be  so  high  an  authority  in  psychology  that  any  who 
desire  to  begin  its  study  may  naturally  be  drawn  to  this  book.  Their  expectations 
will  be  met.  The  outlines  of  the  subject  are  so  happily  treated,  in  a  plain,  familiar 
style  and  with  abundant  illustracion,  as  to  create  and  deepen  interest  in  all  intelligent 
readers  who  care  to  know  anything  of  the  life  of  the  mind.  —  The  Outlook, 


Philosophical  Works  of  George  Trumbull  Ladd 
Elements  of  Physiological  Psychology 

A  Treatise  of  the  Activities  and  Nature  of  Mind  from  the  Phys- 
ical and  Experimental  Point  of  View.  With  numerous  illus- 
trations. By  George  Trumbull  Ladd,  LL.D.,  Professor  of 
Philosophy  in  Yale  University.    8vo.   pp.  696.   $4.50. 

IN  distinction  from  the  introspective  psychology  and  as  a  companion 
to  it,  this  book  is  devoted  to  physiological  and  experimental 
psychology.  It  was  the  first  book  in  English  to  discuss  the  whole 
subject,  and  is  the  only  one  which  may  be  regarded  as  an  adequate 
treatise.  It  includes  the  latest  discoveries,  and  the  most  competent 
critics  pronounce  it  a  credit  to  American  scholarship  and  an  unrivalled 
authority. 

A  calm,  unprejudiced  survey  of  this  comparatively  new  science,  and  a  very  full 
and  comprehensive  one.  —  Atlantic  Monthly. 

D'aprbs  ce  court  r^sum^,  le  lecteur  pent  avoir  une  id^e  suffisante  de  la  composi- 
tion g6n6rale  et  de  I'esprit  de  ce  livre  !  mais  I'analyse  ne  peut  faire  connaitre  I'abon- 
dance  des  informations,  le  nombre  des  documents,  m6moires,  monographies  que 
M.  Ladd  a  utilis6s.  Pour  ceux  qui  suivent  le  mouvement  de  la  psychologie  contem- 
poraine  dans  les  divers  pays,  il  est  inutile  de  dire  que  ce  n'est  pas  Ik  une  petite  tache. 

—  M.T.  RiBOT. 

Ich  habe  mit  vielem  Interesse  mehrere  Theile  aus  diesem  Werke  gelesen,  und 
mich  iiber  die  vortreffliche  Weise  der  Darstellung  sowie  iiber  die  reiche  Sachkenntniss 
gefreut,  von  der  es  Zeugniss  ablegt.  Ich  halte  es  fiir  sehr  verdienstlich,  dass  Sie  in 
englischer  Sprache  ein  Werk  geschaffen  haben,  welches  so  gut  geeignet  ist  den 
Anfanger  in  diesen  schwierigen  Gegenstand  einzufuhren ;  nur  so  mehr  als  ihr  Werk,  so 
viel  ich  weiss,  das  Erste  ist,  welches  nach  den  meinigen  iiber  denselben  verfasst  wurde. 

—  Prof.  W.  Wundt,  of  Leipzig. 

Outlines  of  Physiological  Psychology 

A  Text-Book  of  Mental  Science  for  Academies  and  Colleges. 
By  Prof.  George  T.  Ladd,  Yale  University.  Crown  8vo.  pp. 
505.    $2.00. 

THE  volume  is  not  an  abridgment  or  revision  of  the  larger  book, 
*'  Elements  of  Physiological  Psychology,"  which  is  still  to  be  pre- 
ferred for  mature  students,  but,  like  it,  surveys  the  entire  field,  though 
with  less  details  and  references  that  might  embarrass  beginners.  The 
author  aims  to  furnish  a  complete  yet  correct  text-book  for  the  brief 
study  of  mental  phenomena,  from  the  experimental  and  physiological 
point  of  view. 

We  regard  it  as  even  better  than  the  larger  work,  as  it  is  more  judicious  and 
mature,  having  the  advantages  of  longer  reflection  upon  the  subject  and  larger  experi- 
ence in  teaching  it.    For  its  purpose  there  is  not  a  better  text-book  in  the  language. 

—  The  Nation. 

We  regard  a  knowledge  of  physiological  psychology  as  absolutely  necessary  to  an 
appreciation  of  psychology  in  general.  The  only  book  in  the  language  which  pre- 
tends to  cover  the  entire  field  within  the  compass  of  a  volume  of  five  hundred  pages  is 
this  smaller  work  of  Professor  Ladd.  His  larger  work  stands  without  a  superior  in 
any  language.  — Journal  of  Pedagogy. 


Philosophical  Works  of  George  Trumbull  Ladd 
Introduction  to  Philosophy 

An  Inquiry  after  a  Rational  System  of  Scientific  Principles  and 
their  Relation  to  their  Ultimate  Reality.  By  George  Trumbull 
Ladd,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Philosophy  in  Yale  University.  8vo. 
pp.   426.   $3.00. 

An  introduction  to  philosophy  is  an  excessively  difficult  thing  to  write,  that  is, 
the  kind  of  introduction  which  Professor  Ladd  undertakes.  It  would  be  easy  to  write 
an  introduction  to  a  particular  philosophy,  but  to  write  what  may  serve  as  an  intro- 
duction to  all  of  them  is  another  matter.  This  is  the  merit  of  Professor  Ladd's  book. 
It  introduces  philosophy,  but  not  a  particular  philosophy.  It  states  the  sources, 
problems,  divisions^methods,  and  possible  solutions  of  philosophy  better  than  any 
other  work  of  its  size  in  English.  —  Prof.  J.  Mark  Baldwin,  of  Princeton 
University. 

He  is  liberal,  able,  and  full  of  knowledge.  ...  He  thus  adopts,  if  we  may  judge, 
the  safest,  most  penetrative,  and  most  progressive  form  of  thought.  —  The  Dial. 

A  really  admirable  book.  —  Saturday  Review^  London. 

Philosophy  of  Mind 

An  Essay  in  the  Metaphysics  of  Psychology.  By  George  Trum- 
bull Ladd,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Philosophy  in  Yale  University. 
Octavo,  pp.  412.   $3.00. 

THIS  is  a  speculative  treatment  of  certain  problems  suggested,  but 
not  discussed,  in  the  study  of  psychology.  The  subjects  treated 
are  :  Psychology  and  the  Philosophy  of  Mind,  The  Concept  of  Mind, 
The  Reality  of  Mind,  The  Consciousness  of  Identity  and  the  so-called 
Double  Consciousness,  The  Unity  of  Mind,  Mind  and  Body,  Mate- 
rialism and  Spiritualism,  Monism  and  Dualism,  Origin  and  Perma- 
nence of  Mind,  Place  of  Man's  Mind  in  Nature. 

It  is  one  of  the  most  important  works  in  the  field  of  philosophy  published  in 
recent  years.  The  subject  itself,  and  the  acknowledged  position  and  influence  of  the 
author,  should  strongly  recommend  this  volume  to  all  students  and  to  all  readers  in 
philosophy.  —  John  E.  Russell,  Williams  College. 

Philosophy  of  Knowledge 

By  George  Trumbull  Ladd,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Philosophy  in 
Yale  University.    8vo.  pp.  614.   $4.00. 

THE  book  appeals  to  the  general  reader  by  reason  of  the  relation 
this  subject  bears  to  questions  now  so  prominently  before  the 
philosophical  and  religious  world,  as  well  as  through  the  broad 
sympathy  of  the  author  with  different  phases  of  thought.  It  will  also 
find  a  place  waiting  for  it  as  a  text-book  for  advanced  and  post- 
graduate students  in  logic  and  the  laws  of  thought. 

In  this  analysis  of  truth  and  error,  of  knowledge  and  reality,  dualism  and  monism, 
and  of  knowledge  and  the  absolute,  Professor  Ladd's  discussion  and  conclusions  will 
be  of  great  value  to  all  students  of  philosophy  and  anthropology.  One  of  the  most 
interesting  features  is  its  criticism  of  Kant's  "  Critique  of  Pure  Reason."  .  .  .  The 
two  chapters  on  the  history  of  opinion,  from  Socrates  to  Kant,  and  from  Kant  to  the 
present,  form  a  valuable  part  of  the  book.  —  The  Congregationalist. 


Philosophical  Works  of  George  Trumbull  Ladd 
The  Theory  of  Reality 

An  Essay  in  Metaphysical  System  upon  the  Basis  of  Human 
Cognitive  Experience.  By  George  Trumbull  Ladd,  LL.D.,  Pro- 
fessor of  Philosophy  in  Yale  University.    8vo.   pp.  556.     $4.00. 

THIS  volume  brings  to  its  close  the  series  of  books  in  which  the 
author  has  dealt  with  the  general  problem  of  reality  —  things 
and  minds  —  and  the  possibility  and  the  validity  of  knowledge.  The 
former  volumes  were  "  Philosophy  of  Knowledge  and  Philosophy  of 
Mind." 

Professor  Ladd  has  been  in  the  eye  of  the  philosophical  pubUc  for  so  many  years 
that  much  can  be  taken  for  granted  concerning  any  work  on  metaphysics  that  may 
issue  from  his  hand.  We  can  be  certain,  before  opening  the  book,  that  its  knowl- 
edge is  broad  and  accurate  ;  that  its  psychology  is  well  digested  ;  that  its  method  is 
the  analysis  of  experience  rather  than  speculative  synthesis ;  that  the  spirit  and  the 
results  of  the  sciences  pervade  its  pages,  and  that  its  general  standpoint  is  some 
form  of  theism  sharply  contrasting  with  both  materialism  and  absolute  idealism. 
These  general  virtues  of  his  '*  Theory  of  Reality  "  may  therefore  be  dismissed  with  a 
mer6  reference.  —  Philosophical  Review. 

Professor  Ladd  has  made  every  lover  of  Christian  philosophy  his  debtor  as  few 
Americans  have  done,  and  this  noble  volume  forms  a  fitting  climax  of  his  work  in 
the  paired  hemispheres  of  thought  and  truth.  —Presbyterian  and  Reformed  Review. 


Philosophy  of  Conduct 

A   Treatise   of  the   Facts,  Principles,  and  Ideals  of  Ethics,  in 
three   parts  : 

I.    The    Moral   Self. 
II.  The  Virtuous  Life. 

III.   The  Nature  of  the  Right.    8vo.    $3.50  net.    (Postage  20 
cents.) 

FOLLOWS  "The  Theory  of  Reality"  in  sequence  and  develop- 
ment, treating,  in  the  introduction,  of  the  sphere  and  problems  of 
Ethics,  and  developing  the  subject  under  the  heads  noted  above. 

In  Part  I.  the  author  deals  with  morals  from  the  point  of  view  of 
modern  psychology  and  anthropology,  with  special  discussions  of 
moral  freedom  and  current  forms  of  determination. 

He  offers  in  Part  II.  an  original  classification  of  virtuous  conduct, 
surveying  men's  opinions,  and  considering  virtue  as  a  unit;  with 
special  discussions  of  Moral  Tact  and  the  Character  of  the  Good  Man. 

Part  III.  takes  up  the  ultimate  problems  of  Ethics,  and  shows  how 
all  conceptions  and  ideals  of  human  conduct  are  indissolubly  connected 
with  the  principles  and  ideals  of  general  philosophy  and,  in  particular, 
the  philosophy  of  religion. 

This  is  Professor  Ladd's  most  popular  and  most  literary  work,  as 
well  as  his  newest,  and  the  one  of  all  others  into  which  he  has  put  his 
heart. 


Philosophical  Works  of  George  Trumbull  Ladd 
What  is  the  Bible 

An  Inquiry  of  the  Origin  and  Nature  of  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ments in  the  Light  of  Modern  Biblical  Study.  i2mo.  $2.00.  By 
George  Trumbull  Ladd,  D.D. 

Summary  of  Contents  :  Jewish  and  Early  Christian  Views  —  The 
Bible  and  the  Sciences  of  Nature  —  The  Miracles  of  the  Bible  —  The 
Histories  —  The  Prophecies  —  Moral  and  Religious  Teaching  of  the 
Bible  —  Authorship  of  the  Biblical  Books  —  The  Bible  as  Literature 
—  The  Canon  and  the  Text —  Revelation  and  Inspiration,  etc. 

A  work  of  inestimable  value  to  pastors,  to  laymen,  and  to  teachers.  —  New 
Englander. 

This  will  prove  a  very  interesting  and  instructive  book  for  the  steadily  increasing 
army  of  Bible  students  who  want  to  learn  more  of  the  genesis  and  development  of  the 
sacred  Scriptures.  The  author  has  adopted  his  former  work  without  any  loss  of 
power.  We  see  the  same  qualities  of  patient  research,  of  wide  information,  of  candid 
and  courageous  facing  of  difficulties.  —  The  Interior. 

For  those  who  take  interest  in  the  question  which  forms  the  title  of  this  book, 
Professor  Ladd's  volume  will  prove  both  interesting  and  valuable.  .  .  .  His  view  of 
the  subject  of  inspiration,  as  popularly  set  forth  in  most  confessions  of  Protestant 
churches,  is  well  worth  consulting.  .  .  .  Other  noteworthy  chapters  are  those  which 
treat  of  "The  Bible  and  the  Sciences  of  Nature,"  "  The  Miracles  of  the  Bible,"  "  The 
Prophecies  of  the  Bible,"  and  "The  Canon  and  the  Text."  Professor  Ladd  faces 
the  difficulties  in  a  manly  way,  and  in  substance  upholds  the  ordinary  Christian  view 
of  these  topics.  —  New  York  Times. 

The  Doctrine  of  Sacred  Scripture 

A  Critical,  Historical,  and  Dogmatic  Inquiry  into  the  Origin  and 

Nature  of  the  Old  and  New  Testaments.     2  vols.     8vo.     $7.00. 

By  George  Trumbull  Ladd,  D.D. 

It  is  the  most  elaborate,  erudite,  judicious  discussion  of  the  doctrine  of  the  Scrip- 
ture, in  its  various  aspects,  with  which  I  am  acquainted.  I  have  no  hesitation  in 
saying  that,  for  enabhng  a  young  minister  to  present  views  alike  wise  and  reverent 
respecting  the  nature  and  use  of  Sacred  Scripture,  the  faithful  study  of  this  thorough, 
candid,  scholarly  work  will  be  worth  to  him  as  much  as  half  the  studies  of  his  semi- 
nary course.  —  J.  Henry  Thayer,  D.D. 

In  truth  there  lies  imbedded  in  the  book,  as  incidental  to  the  discussion,  a  vast 
critical  commentary,  from  an  accomplished  scholar,  on  all  parts  of  the  Bible.  The 
exegetical  student,  who  may  care  comparatively  little  for  doctrinal  or  philosophical 
discussion,  will  resort  to  these  volumes  as  an  extremely  valuable  contribution  to  his 
own  special  department.  —  Prof.  George  P.  Fisher,  of  Yale  University,  in  New 
York  Tribune. 

The  present  volumes  are  evidently  the  result  of  much  labor  and  research.  They 
are  also  of  special  interest  to  Biblical  students  at  this  time,  as  being  an  earnest  as  well 
as  vigorous  effort  to  deal  satisfactorily  with  a  subject  of  the  highest  importance  to 
mankind.  —  New  York  Times. 

What  is  the  Bible  ?  .  .  .  The  answer  which  has  been  supplied  to  this  question 
is  so  clear  and  striking,  is  built  up  with  so  much  solid  learning,  and  delivered  in  a 
manner  so  perspicuous  and  pleasing,  that  we  believe  it  calculated  to  play  an  important 
part  in  the  theological  revolution  now  in  progress  throughout  Christendom.  —  London 
Christian  World. 


Philosophical  Works  of  George  Trumbull  Ladd 
The  Principles  of  Church  Polity 

Crown  8vo.   $2.50.  - 

Contents.  Introduction.  Lecture  I.  The  Principles  of  Congrega- 
tionalism—  II.  The  Principles  of  Congregationalism  applied  to  man 
as  a  rational  soul  —  III.  The  Principles  of  Congregationalism  applied 
to  man  as  a  social  being —  IV.  The  Principles  of  Congregationalism 
applied  to  man  as  a  citizen  —  V.  The  formal  Principle  of  Congrega- 
tionalism—  VI.  The  Principle  of  a  Regenerate  Membership  —  VII. 
The  Principles  of  Congregationalism  applied  to  the  purity  of  the 
ministry  —  VIII.  The  Principle  of  the  Communion  of  Churches  — 
IX.  The  Principle  of  the  Communion  of  Churches  — X.  The  Self- 
Propagation  of  Congregationalism  —  XI.  Congregationalism  and 
Foreign  Missions  —  XII.  Present  and  Prospective  Tendencies  of 
Congregationalism. 

THIS  volume  gives  a  philosophical  analysis  of  the  principles  which 
should  enter  into  any  scheme  of  church  polity,  and  then  endeavors 
to  show  how  far  these  principles  have  been  acknowledged  and  illus- 
trated in  modern  Congregationalism. 

A  richness  of  practical  suggestion  runs  all  through  this  logical  development  of 
the  principles  and  facts,  which  is  very  refreshing  and  stimulating  to  the  reader.  In 
this  respect  the  book  is  peerless  among  many  essays  upon  the  same  general  subject. 
—  Hartford  Religious  Herald. 


CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS, 
Publishers,  153-157  Fifth  Ave.,  New  York. 


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